


we did enjoy our happiness

by mockturtletale



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Conflict, M/M, Miscommunication, Multi, Other, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, rookie learning curve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:55:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Ryan isn't doing much of anything, but if it's working he can keep it up. He quickly figures out that the easiest way to make Jordan smile is through clean, competent plays, and the surest way to get a laugh out of Taylor is to either trip up or fire a slapshot at him.</p>
<p>Once he knows what to do, Ryan is off and running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we did enjoy our happiness

**Author's Note:**

> This is for earth_is_a_star who prompted "Jordan and Taylor break up. Nuge tries to get them back together and falls in love with them along the way," on the home ice stickhandling challenge roughly one million years ago. She not only came up with the premise, but wrote me encouraging lj comments and tumblr asks throughout the process of writing it and most importantly did not laugh in my face when I had to break the news to her this week that this story had eclipsed the 35k mark. ♥
> 
> Huge thanks to Taylor and Karla for reading bits and pieces of this as I worked on it. To Karla in particular for being destroyed by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins' everything about as much as I am, and for so perceptively pointing out that this is effectively the story of how he DIYs their love. Special thanks to Taylor for holding my hand during the very difficult task of writing sex scenes, and for yelling at me to woman-up and finish this when I whined about how I couldn't and wouldn't. STARS, the pair of you. ♥ ♥

When Ryan gets drafted, he already knows exactly where this team needs him. Maybe not straight away, and maybe not with great success right off the dot, but eventually, he knows, he'll find his place between Hall and Eberle and all three of them will make it count. 

A couple hours after Edmonton choose him, the texts and calls start trickling in. Mostly it's just introductions Ryan really doesn't need, and welcoming messages that he's incredibly grateful for and humbled by, but in amongst those are the friendly warnings. 

_don't listen to anything Whitney says about Hallsy and Ebs. you totally get used to it, it's not even a big deal,_ Sam Gagner advises, and Ryan lifts an eyebrow as he reads it. 

_We're kind of a rag tag bunch, but we're a real close team and we'll all have your back. I know you're a little guy, but don't worry. You've got the whole team behind you, just like Hall and Ebs do,_ he gets from Andy Sutton, the terrifyingly huge defenseman, so that's reassuring but also makes him wonder why he, too, singles out Hall and Eberle. 

_hahahahahaha hope you don't mind linemate pda_ Whits sends soon after, though, and that clears a lot up. 

Ryan knows Eberle and Hall are particularly close; he's seen them play together and he's watched their interviews. It's hardly unusual for teammates to be close, but Ryan has just met Taylor Hall in person and listened to him mention Jordan fifteen times in about as many minutes, so it's not exactly surprising to think that it might be more than that. 

Ryan thinks about it for a minute; thinks about what it might be like to play on a line with two guys who are in a relationship. It's not unheard of, but it's not something he's had personal experience with so far, so he wonders how it might be different and how it might affect what is expected of him. But eventually he shrugs and picks up his phone to start wading through more messages. 

_welcome to the team, ryan! can't wait to see what we can do with you!_ he gets from Jordan, and Ryan's already on the same page. 

Whatever this team and these guys need from him, he'll give. He can't imagine playing with boyfriends will have a huge impact on his game, but he won't know for sure what he's dealing with until he gets to Edmonton and gets to meet them together. 

 

____

 

Ryan isn't even really sure what he's expecting when he arrives in Edmonton. He tries not to think about it on the drive over to his first day at Oilers training camp, because there's no point in psyching himself out. Everyone seems nice already, keeping in touch with him from time to time in the weeks since the draft, and yeah he's the new guy but it's only training camp, and he has already survived prospect camp. He's hardly in for an easy time of it, but he'll manage. 

Or so he thinks, until he arrives. 

Introductions go fine, and for the most part his arrival goes unnoticed. It's easy to get into his usual routine, find his spot and get to work. Everything is totally fine. Completely and totally normal. Everything, that is, except for the horrible, choking tension in the locker room and out on the ice. For almost the entire first session Ryan thinks it's because of him. He's the new variable here, right? He's got to be what's making everyone so tense and uncomfortable, stiflingly silent and awkward. Ryan is convinced he's done something wrong already - stood somewhere he shouldn't have stood or said something he shouldn't have said, stolen someone's spot or messed up someone's routine. He hasn't even been in the building an hour yet and what he’s probably feeling right now is the tension of having ruined their chances this season already. 

It's Ryan's first day. He's maybe a little hysterical. 

Thankfully Hemsky comes to his aid. Hemmer is an alternate captain and Ryan isn't surprised it's he who takes him to one side. Horcoff looks like he's got enough to deal with right now, if his grip on his stick and the way he keeps a watchful eye on every single person on the ice is anything to go by. Hemsky lines up behind Ryan while they wait their turn in a shot drill, and knocks his stick into Ryan's when Ryan is too busy frantically retracing his every step so far that morning to notice that Hemsky's been trying to get his attention. 

"Hey. You okay?" 

Ryan relaxes marginally when he realizes he hasn't zoned out and messed up the rhythm of the line. 

"Oh. Uh ... yeah? I think? Is everything -- _am_ I okay?" he asks, because Hemmer doesn't look angry, just kind of concerned until Ryan asks that question and then he laughs. It's a huge relief. 

"You're good," Hemmer says, nodding, "This is a terrible first practice for you, though. Hall and Ebs didn't tell any of us before they got here. Arrived separately and stayed that way. Ebs told Horc when cornered, but neither have said a word since then. It's a shock, you know? Still weird. But it'll be fine, don't worry. By tomorrow they'll have it together. You look good so far, keep it up," and then he's gone, stepping back from Ryan and nudging him to face forward and take his turn. 

And that sounds like he’s saying Ebs and Hall have broken up. So at least it's not Ryan's fault. But he still feels like he walked into the middle of a warzone. The very centre of which is his line. And the very centre of that is him. Shit. 

Needless to say, the line drills are not a fun and successful endeavour. Ryan has watched Taylor and Jordan play together, he knows how good they are at predicting where one another will be on the ice, so the way their passes are all overshot or falling short today has to be a mental thing. They don't yell at each other when they make mistakes, or even speak to one another at all. Each of them speaks to Ryan, but just a little, and only when they absolutely have to. So Ryan tries to avoid forcing that, puts his head down, and runs himself ragged - skating to what feels like every corner of the ice to do whatever he can to salvage their missed passes to one another. Eventually he gives up on that and stays between them instead, makes it so they cycle the puck through him. That's better, but still not good, and Ryan can't remember a time when he stepped off the ice feeling as frustrated and lost as he does today. 

He's got his head down, already trying to think of ways to make this work as he approaches the locker room, so doesn't see it coming and nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand shoots out to grab him by the elbow and near enough drag him further down the corridor, out of earshot.

Taylor has his helmet off, and even with his face drawn in emotion, his eyes nearly bruised with exhaustion, he's sweating and _gorgeous_ and Ryan has a brief second to think 'I so, so would,' before Taylor speaks, and the way his voice cracks reminds Ryan why they're here, why things are like this, and that he's a terrible person. 

"Hey, I'm ... I'm sorry about today. About this. You shouldn't have to walk in to this on your first day. I'm really sorry," Taylor says, and even though Ryan has only talked to the guy like three times in person at this point, being instantly attracted to him has nothing at all to do with how Ryan kind of wants to wrap him up in a hug right now. 

He settles for taking his glove off and patting Taylor awkwardly on the shoulder, instead. 

"It's fine, it's not your fault. Are ... um ... are you okay, though? I mean it's none of my business, but I hope you are okay. Or like ... will be. It's rough, I'm sure. So ... uh ... sorry?" 

Ryan is as smooth as a hedgehog, and about as emotionally comforting as one too. 

Taylor smiles though, this strangely relieved little grin that looks like the fullest expression he's had cause to stretch to in days. Ryan feels a warm jolt of pride, because at least he did one thing right today. 

"You're a good guy, Ryan. Welcome to the team. We'll be better for you, I promise," Taylor says, as he walks away. 

When Ryan gets back to the locker room, Jordan looks over at him and tilts his head, considering Ryan for a second before he mouths 'sorry' across the room at him. Ryan feels just as sorry for Jordan, and worse for how he's struck dumb by the thought of Jordan and Taylor together. That must have been a sight to behold, but now is hardly the time or place, so he shrugs and smiles at Jordan, holds it until it's returned, and then turns away to rummage for his shampoo. When he finds it, he notes that it has been replaced with one of those 'no tears, no tangles' bottles for kids, the ones shaped like sharks. When he looks up, though, no-one is watching him for a reaction. He's almost disappointed, but not at all surprised. 

Ryan's first day hasn't gone as planned for any of them. 

 

___

 

Day two is marginally better. Taylor and Jordan speak to each other, at least, and it's only when they do that Ryan remembers they live together. He can't imagine how terrible that is, how strained things must be for them right now. He winces when he realizes that practice must be about as good as it gets for the two of them these days. 

It's basically the worst, but the three of them play better together today, and they both smile at him a time or two, which makes Horcs give him a subtle but approving nod, and has Sam falling into Ryan against the boards, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and leaning in to press a smacking kiss to his cheek. 

"I know you're really new, and still totally jailbait, but I think I love you," he says, grinning, and Ryan's laughter is a surprise to him too. 

"Seriously," Sam continues, "Whatever you're doing with those two, keep doing it, please, I beg you." 

And Ryan isn't doing much of anything, but if it's working he can keep it up. He quickly figures out that the easiest way to make Jordan smile is through clean, competent plays, and the surest way to get a laugh out of Taylor is to either trip up or fire a slapshot at him. Once he knows what to do, Ryan is off and running. 

 

___

 

On day five of training camp, Taylor stays out on the ice with Ryan to help him round up the pucks. 

"Missing rookie duty already?" Ryan asks, and Taylor smiles that awful, lovely, genuine smile that he keeps aiming at Ryan. 

"Excuse me for wanting to look out for you. Who knows what kind of trouble you could get into out here all by yourself." 

When he affords himself a glance over at Taylor, Ryan sees difference in him, though. The way he seems to physically deflate in rooms that he doesn't have to share with Jordan. He's not putting on a brave face, he's not holding himself as stiffly or keeping his jaw as set, and Ryan wonders how it is that he's this trusted here already. 

"Hey, you wanna come hang out at my place?" Ryan asks, made brave and bold by how grateful he feels. For the first time since he moved in, he's glad he has his own place. Most days and almost every night he's lonely, because he doesn't know anyone here yet, but if he'd ended up staying with Jonesy as the team had originally intended, he wouldn't feel as comfortable asking Taylor over. And now he's thankful that Jonesy's mother in law got sick and had to come live with them, because Ryan really truly is the worst person in the world. 

Taylor looks to be considering the offer, though, so maybe karma is still on Ryan's side. 

"Sure," Taylor says eventually, lobbing a puck at the crate and nodding. "I'll pick up some beer and you can wonder how badly you're about to be destroyed at Call of Duty. Just FYI, though, it's going to be ugly. You'll probably cry, but don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. It’s a reasonable reaction to my glory. I’ll understand." Ryan is struck by the thought that no-one should be able to make a mouthguard-grin look so good. 

Ryan snorts, and elbows Taylor, and when they skate off the ice still shoving at each other, he feels good heading back to the locker room for the first time all week. 

 

___

 

So Ryan is really looking forward to hanging out with Taylor. 

Breakups suck; that’s news to exactly no-one, and it’s got to be exponentially more difficult and complicated when you break up with someone who is your best friend, your roommate, _and_ your co-worker; it’d be nothing but reasonable for Ryan to want to ensure the survival and success of his line. But somehow it’s more than that. Ryan knows that even if Taylor and Jordan weren’t his line - even if they weren’t on his team - he’d still want to see them happy. 

It’s gratitude, he thinks. He’s grateful to be here, playing in the NHL with a team that needs him and isn’t shy about giving him the opportunity to prove himself. Ryan wants to show them that their confidence in him is appreciated and warranted. He wants everyone on this team to know that they made the right decision in trusting him. Taylor and Jordan make the transition to playing at an NHL level easier than Ryan ever let himself imagine it could be. They’re world-calibre hockey players, but they’re far from intimidating. They’re just like the rest of the teammates Ryan has had. Only a little older, considerably more talented, and infinitely more attractive. Ryan can already feel himself gravitating toward them, drawn in by a force that’s only mostly hockey related. 

It’s definitely early days to be vying for a spot in their personal lives, but from what Ryan has seen so far most of the guys on the team aren’t in on that hunt. Nobody wants to take sides, and being friends with both Taylor and Jordan before they were a couple probably makes it impossible to get involved in ways that won’t be seen as doing just that. 

But Ryan is new. Ryan can’t have loyalties yet. Ryan doesn’t know why they broke up, or how they got together in the first place. Ryan has no backstory, no personal tie to either of them. He just wants a shot at trying to help. 

Ryan wants to be good for this team in as many ways as he can. And given half a chance, he’d do anything to help a teammate. 

 

___

 

For example: if it helps Taylor to kick Ryan’s ass at every video game he owns, then Ryan will happily oblige. He’s not even really letting Taylor win so much as he’s simply too distracted to give it his all. Taylor had just appeared, beer in hand, and made himself right at home in Ryan’s living room, and Ryan hadn’t thought it would be awkward or whatever, but he hadn’t really thought it’d be this easy, either. Because that’s exactly what it is. Easy and fun and good in a way that makes Ryan’s chest a little tight when he wonders what it could have been like if he’d been a year older or if they’d been a year younger; if he’d come to Edmonton before they got together.

As is, he’s picking up the pieces and hoping that there will be room for him somewhere in the middle of the mess they eventually make again. But he can’t help but wonder how things would have been. If the three of them would have become close, if he’d been here right from the beginning. 

His train of thought isn’t helped by Taylor, who talks non-stop as they play. He tries to catch himself the first time he mentions Jordan (chirping Ryan for not yet having mastered a cheat that Jordan stumbled upon by total accident) but when he freezes up and looks at Ryan with wide eyes - looking somehow caught - and Ryan just shifts closer and asks Taylor to show him how to do it, he lets himself slip more often. Their mostly one-sided conversation is soon littered with bits and pieces of information about Jordan, nothing about their relationship, but something very telling in Taylor’s tone anyway - everything laid out in how the more he talks about Jordan, the further his shoulders fall. 

“Jordan won’t even believe that you just pulled that off,” Taylor says, twisting into it when he jerks the controller to try and push Ryan’s car off the track, after he successfully executes a 720 roll that puts his driver right next to Taylor’s when he’d been three behind to begin with. 

It’s “Ebs always yells at me for biting the caps off, even when I bamboozle him with the logic that we’re fucking hockey players, and these teeth probably aren’t ours for long anyway” when Ryan laughs at the twist top beers Taylor brought. 

“Ebby loves that movie, you’ll have to come with when we check out the sequel, you know it’s in theaters next month, right?” when Ryan gently beats him over the head with the first dvd case his hand falls on. 

Ryan doesn’t know what to make of the lack of continuity. Sometimes it’s “Jordan did,” “Jordan would have said,” “Jordan liked,” “Jordan used to think,” and that past tense feels like grit in a wound that isn’t even Ryan’s, but the future tense, the “Jordan will”s and the “Jordan’s gonna want”s are worse somehow, give Ryan the kind of pause that he suddenly and vehemently wants to push through and get past. 

He doesn’t know how, or if he even can, at this point, so he stays quiet and lets Taylor talk, but he can’t quite control the urge to show Taylor that he’s here, that he’s listening and that he cares. 

Ryan does what he does best and he uses his body to say what he means. 

After the third time he leans into Taylor’s space (twice to elbow him viciously, once to bump his shoulder companionably) he just doesn’t lean back out of it. Ryan has never really been a fan of the unspoken change that takes place for hockey players once they’re out of junior - this weird and stupid standard that says you can touch your teammates a hundred different ways in mock-conflict, but only one way for celebration, that instance itself confined to a single occasion. Physical contact is a big deal for them and it’s something Ryan has never seen the sense in bracketing or confining. He likes to make that clear to new teammates as early as possible and if the way Taylor stills for a second but then sits a little further back into the couch so Ryan fits better against him is anything to go by, Taylor is on board. Super on board, maybe, since he takes Ryan’s proximity as some kind of challenge, something to be matched. He rests his elbow on Ryan’s thigh instead of his own when he leans forward to concentrate on establishing his prowess every time they start a new game, and he happily settles back with one arm up over the line of Ryan’s shoulders on the back of the couch when Ryan has cause to school him. It’s like they both decide to skip over the awkward ‘getting to know you’ stage of being new to a team, and get comfortable in the ‘personal space is for losers, eh?’ range that they’ll inevitably circle and settle in, anyway. They’re definitely ahead of the curve on this, but that’s exactly where they seem to be on everything else, so Ryan isn’t concerned. He’s mostly warm and a little buzzed. 

After a couple hours of a fairly evenly split trade of jibes and increasingly ridiculous victory dances - Taylor’s promise of defeat resolutely proven to be false and baseless - things wrap up to a pretty natural pause. 

This is the part where they make half an effort to clean up after themselves, switch off the tv, say their ‘goodnight’s and part ways and Ryan knows that Taylor knows that because from the corner of his eye he sees Taylor glance at the three empty beer bottles that chart each of their progress and thumb his homescreen to check the time. But Taylor wavers. He shoves his phone into his back pocket and looks at Ryan, not saying anything, but not making a move to leave, either. 

They’ve got camp again in the morning, not too early and just a repeat of the timetable they’d worked through today, but they could always stand to be better and work harder and do more. 

Ryan thinks about that and then thinks briefly about how he’s never found himself in this position before - caught between two courses of action that are good for his team, with one that is right and one that appeals to him more. It’s obvious what he should do and Ryan knows it’s clear to both of them how this should go. 

Taylor starts to move when Ryan gets up off the couch, but he masks it as a grab for their empties when Ryan says “I’ll grab two more from the fridge and then we can actually talk about your breakup, yeah?” 

He wonders for a second if he’s read it wrong - if this was a mistake - because it’s not something he’s ever tried to do before and he has no idea if he’s doing it right at all. But when Taylor follows him into the kitchen and drops their bottles into the recycling, rinses his hands under the faucet and then dries them off in Ryan’s shirt to the soundtrack of Ryan’s squawks, grinning the whole time and apparently charmed by the entire experience, Ryan figures he can trust his instincts. 

“Yeah, that’d be … that’d be good, actually,” Taylor says, pushing Ryan back down onto the couch first so he can lie back against one arm of it and throw his feet up into Ryan’s lap and Ryan wonders if maybe he’s not a little bit naturally gifted at this, too. 

 

___

 

“I’ll probably always be like … in love with him. I always was. But we don’t work together. Not that way.” 

Ryan is surprised at how quickly Taylor opens up about it, how honest he is from the get go, but maybe he’s just been waiting for someone to ask or only needed someone to show him that they care enough to listen and not take sides. It’s gratifying to be trusted with this, but it’s really hard to hear and Ryan can’t quite put his finger on why. The way Taylor frames it as this eternal, inescapable thing that won’t ever change but won’t ever be the way it’s maybe supposed to be again makes Ryan feel something like hope and dread all mixed up into an ache in his stomach, a sudden weight in his hands. 

“But you work as friends? You think that’s … the best it can be?” Ryan doesn’t mean to pry or make this difficult for Taylor, but he wants to know that they’re doing what’s best for them. 

“Finding a way to be together and make it work would have been the best it can be, probably. But being best friends again is as much as we can hope for, it seems like. We really tried, you know? We tried harder than either of us have ever tried at anything and it wasn’t hard to commit to it that much, but it was really fucking hard when we figured out we couldn’t do it.” Taylor takes a long swig from his bottle after that and Ryan is torn between watching his throat work around the swallow and warring with the image of Taylor Hall not being able to do something, Jordan Eberle accepting that his effort wasn’t enough. 

“And Jordan … Jordan felt that way? That you just couldn’t make it work?” he has to ask. 

Taylor snorts, sharply fond, and shifts until his socked feet are wiggling in under Ryan’s thigh instead, sits forward to rest his head against the back of the couch and fixes Ryan with a raised eyebrow. 

“You’ve known the guy for more than five minutes. Do you think he accepted that?” 

“I didn’t think he would have, no. So he didn’t want to break up? Is that why things are still bad between you?” Ryan resists the urge to cover Taylor’s ankle with the palm of his hand. Physical contact always makes him feel better when he’s having the kind of conversation that leaves him feeling exposed, but he doesn’t know Taylor well enough to know if that would soothe or spook him. 

Taylor looks like like he needs something, though. He looks emptied out by the conversation, wide-eyed and flushed like finally talking about it is a kind of purging exertion, a necessary effort. 

But maybe Ryan is reading too much into it. Maybe it’s just the beers. 

“He wouldn’t ever admit that it couldn’t work, I guess. Like … we both knew it wasn’t right, but he refused to admit that the way it was wasn’t enough. He wanted us to keep trying. He thinks that trying to figure it out together is better than walking away or whatever. But he’s -- he’s Jordan Eberle, you know? It’s not that he doesn’t know when to give up, it’s just that that point basically doesn’t exist for him. There’s never a time when he’s not totally capable of doing what needs to be done.” 

“And in this case?” Ryan prompts, because Taylor is contradicting himself. Maybe Taylor doesn’t need to clarify what he’s saying in order to know what he means, but Ryan needs that. Ryan’s goal first and foremost is to listen, but he wants to put himself in a position to actually help too. 

Taylor’s mouth twists before he speaks and for the first time since they started talking about it, he hesitates. 

“Arguing or not agreeing about what we wanted was never our problem, but I guess we disagreed on where it was headed, in the end. Or like … we both knew how it would wind up, but Jordan thought that would be enough and I didn’t. I wanted him, but I didn’t want that.” 

Ryan doesn’t want to push Taylor here, because he’s pushed enough for one night already. They can leave it here and talk about it some more the next time they hang out. 

Or not. Because Taylor continues. He looks right at Ryan with pain clear across his face for a split second and then he looks away, looks at his hands curled tight around his bottle and keeps speaking. 

“I love almost everything about him, you know? Nobody’s perfect, nobody doesn’t ever piss you off or not do stuff you can’t understand, but every single thing that’s great about him is so much more than … He’s always been more. I thought he was too much for me. Too _good_ for me. And then it turned out that he felt the same way about me. And it was --” Taylor breaks off, and looks at Ryan again. He smiles and it throws Ryan for a second, but the expression looks right on Taylor. He looks tired and happy; like he worked hard for something that was completely worth it and that’s how Ryan always wants to see him look. 

“It was the best thing I ever did,” Taylor confesses and Ryan wants to hug him; he wants to wrap his arms around him and let him hide his face against Ryan’s shoulder, he wants to do anything that will make him feel better. He wants to listen to him talk about his relationship with Jordan forever, until Ryan can find the solution. 

He listens to what Taylor says and he sees how Taylor looks when he talks about Jordan, and he thinks they probably belong together. They have to. If someone ever looked like that when they talked about how they felt about Ryan, he’d never let them go. 

In an instant he’s invested in helping them fix this. 

He lets Taylor talk for as long as he needs to and he listens carefully and mentally bookmarks the parts that are hardest for Taylor to tell, the parts that make him smile sadly, sweetly hurt, the bits that make him look away and the times when he looks at Ryan like he needs something from him besides just his understanding. 

It’s a long night. It’s tough to get through, but Taylor looks so much better by the time he’s getting ready to leave that Ryan feels like he just scored the game winning overtime goal, shorthanded and from his knees. It wasn’t the cleanest effort, but he committed to it with everything he’s got and he’s determined to keep giving them nothing less. 

Taylor stretches out before he gets up off the couch, and Ryan is thrilled to see his posture stay loose, watch him move easily when he rolls up onto his feet. Taylor lazily drags his hoodie on over his head, and sways forward to slip his shoes back on, and the tension he’s been carrying all week is gone from the long, lean lines of his body. 

Even his smile is easy, when Ryan walks him to the door and neither of them have had so much to drink that they’ll feel it tomorrow, but maybe it made it easier for Taylor to talk, because it makes it easier for Ryan to say, 

“Hey, thanks. For … trusting me, I guess. I know I’m new and you don’t really know me yet, but you can trust me. I’m gonna be good for this team.” 

Taylor just rolls his eyes and looks at Ryan like he’s half super fond of him, half totally exasperated by his nonsense. 

“Duh. You already are,” he says, pitching forward on his toes to pull Ryan into a hug. 

“Thanks for listening,” he says and the line of his jaw is brushing the side of Ryan’s neck, the words a gentle hum of sensation. Ryan doesn’t even feel the shiver coming until it’s falling down his spine. Taylor’s arms tighten around him for a split second, the palm of his hand against Ryan’s shoulder pulling him in tighter until he freezes and steps away. 

“I should go,” Taylor says quietly, but he steps forward again instead and reaches for Ryan. His fingertips trailing slowly up the side of Ryan’s throat raise goosebumps as they go and Ryan’s eyes have already slipped shut by the time Taylor leans in and presses his mouth carefully to Ryan’s. One of them gasps, but Ryan has no idea who, because all he knows is that Taylor is warm against him, warm and close and not moving away; going nowhere but forward, pulling Ryan closer and brushing their mouths together over and over again. 

Ryan gets lost in it for as long as he can allow himself to and then for a beat longer when he can’t help it; the thick swell of Taylor’s lower lip something he has to let himself suck at just once, just for a second before he gets it together and pulls away. 

“Not that I don’t want to,” he says, the palms of his hands pointedly tracing the curve of Taylor’s waist, his fingers pushed up under Taylor’s hoodie but sweeping softly down over his ribs, mapping the warm strength of his hip bones over his tshirt, “But this probably isn’t the best idea right now.” 

It feels like the best idea. The hard arches of Taylor’s hips in his hands feels like nothing Ryan has ever known, everything he wants and something he’d have to be stupid to turn down. But it’s different for Taylor and Ryan has to give him the out he probably needs. 

Taylor doesn’t disagree, but he doesn’t let Ryan go either. 

He kisses him again and this time he doesn’t let up until he gets Ryan’s mouth open against his, their tongues caught together and one hand lost in the thicket of Ryan’s hair, the other up underneath the back of his shirt, spanning the distance between his shoulder blades. Taylor mouth is hot and eager, skilled and focused on kissing Ryan breathless, and the combined push and pull of his hands has Ryan held helpless in the tension they’ve spun through him. He groans into the kiss when Taylor sucks at his tongue and Taylor answers with something suspiciously like a whimper when Ryan nips at his mouth with careful teeth. Ryan is just about ready to give up all efforts toward polite linemate etiquette and shamelessly charm his way into Taylor’s pants when Taylor finally manages to pull away. 

“You’re right,” he says against Ryan’s mouth and Ryan hates that he’s right. 

Taylor kisses him one last time and then steps back to comb Ryan’s hair back into place with his fingers. It’s a gesture that makes Ryan ache. 

“You make me really want to do a whole bunch of stupid things, but none of ‘em are a good idea right now. But … that could change. Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Ryan agrees shakily, eyes still locked on Taylor’s mouth in a way that’s probably inappropriate, but he can’t help it when Taylor’s flushed and breathing hard, standing in front of Ryan with his hands shoved deep into his pockets like he’s trying really hard not to touch Ryan again. 

Ryan takes another step back and gives Taylor the room he needs to actually leave and Taylor looks back just once before he goes, smiling at Ryan kind of sheepishly, but the expression isn’t forced. 

“See you in the morning. And thanks again for tonight.” 

 

___

 

Ryan tries not to think about what it might mean, because he figures it’s pretty safe to say that neither of them have a clue. The timing sucked and Taylor is definitely still figuring out his situation with Jordan. Ryan has been in Edmonton for all of ten seconds, and they’re teammates. Any single one of those would be an excellent reason to leave it alone, so with their combination to consider they’re pretty much covered. 

But none of the negatives can compete with the fact that making out with Taylor had been amazing and Ryan really wants to do it again. A lot, if at all possible. 

Thinking about what it meant or what it might come to mean when the timing is better won’t get him anywhere, so Ryan sets it aside for now. It happened, it was great, Taylor seemed to think so too, but Taylor needs time and Ryan needs to figure out where he fits into the bigger picture in a bunch of different capacities, so it’s shelved for right now and that’s fine. 

 

____

 

And then Ryan arrives to camp the next morning, and it’s not so much fine as it is …. not fine at all. 

 

____

 

It’s easy to brush the whole thing off when Taylor walks in, because Taylor just shoots him that same sheepish grin he’d left him with and Ryan returns it as best he can, even if he suspects his version of it comes off a little more hopeful than he’d intended. 

Their stalls are right next to one another’s and when they start getting ready in companionable near-silence, it’s just like it’s been every morning so far. Except for how Taylor smirks at Ryan when he catches him checking him out and grips his hip tighter than strictly necessary when he leans around him to steal his stick tape. It’s … nice. It’s harmless flirtation that feels totally natural and mostly innocent. It’s having fun without taking it to a place that could cause potential complication and that’s the theme of what happened last night, what’s happening now. It’s exciting, and more importantly it’s easy to not get caught up in. 

But when Jordan arrives the playful nature of the back and forth between Ryan and Taylor becomes something else entirely. 

If Taylor hadn’t instantly started acting like Ryan had leprosy it probably wouldn’t have been a big deal, but as soon as Jordan walks into the room Taylor practically leaps away from Ryan and then refuses to so much as look at him until they make it out onto the ice. It’s only then that he really relaxes back into something like the ease they’d worked up between them and that’s their downfall in the end: the whiplash-inducing reception Taylor gives Ryan. Jordan doesn’t notice it in the locker room, not that Ryan sees, but when Taylor falls against Ryan and crushes him to the boards, laughing and trying to jam his stick down into Ryan’s skate until he sees Jordan watching and backs off like he’s been burnt, that makes it more than obvious that something is off here and Jordan eyes them with the kind of assessing gaze that Ryan didn’t know he’d been dreading until he’s caught by it. 

It’s all fun and games making out with new teammates and they’re maybe not the kind of games that Ryan is used to playing, but that must be the problem. His inexperience with anything close to this situation is the only thing he can think to blame for his horrible, selfish ignorance on this one, because regardless of how much he’d wanted to kiss Taylor and how good it had felt to do so, Taylor is Jordan’s ex-boyfriend and best friend still. And they’re his linemates. And Ryan is once again reminded that he’s a terrible person. 

Jordan doesn’t ask and he doesn’t react like he’s figured out anything that makes him want to lose his shit, but he’d have every right to, probably. 

Ryan keeps his head down, hung low where it belongs, and focuses on nothing but the puck for the rest of the session. 

The real kicker is that the three of them are magic together. They play like the puck is waiting for their touch and their ability to read where one another is going to be is already clearly a huge strength. That day in practice they play at a level that Ryan hasn’t been able to reach with linemates he’s played alongside for years and Taylor and Jordan follow him off the ice grinning and jostling one another, working off of the chemistry the three of them had had out there and letting it cinch them closer, feeding back and forth between them bright and energetic. 

No-one hangs back while Ryan rounds up pucks after practice and the job seems to take five times as long as it does when he’s got help; feels like it takes at least twice as long as it really does. Jordan and Taylor both look up and smile when he gets back to the locker room, but that moment pales in comparison to the one that follows, when they make eye contact after catching one another grinning at him and after a pause grin at each other instead. Ryan feels that smile like a stick to the back of his knees, nothing all that vehement or vicious but a sure little threat that reminds him, in his own voice somewhere deep and dark in the back of his head, that none of this was ever really about him. 

Ryan watches them walk out into the parking lot together, heads bent close, really honestly talking to one another like they haven’t all week. It looks nothing but natural and Ryan is at a loss. 

Horcoff comes up behind him and claps him on the shoulder, nodding after Jordan and Taylor when Ryan looks at him in question. 

“You’re doing good, kid. In there and out here. Keep it up.” 

 

___

 

Day seven of training camp is pretty much the same as day six, but somehow even better. 

During the morning workout session Taylor and Jordan stick close to Ryan and the initial awkwardness that Taylor had shown when Jordan is around doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore. The three of them are as effortlessly aware of one another outside of the game as they are when they’re playing it and if it weren’t for the fact that that it really does seem to be effortless, Ryan would be annoyed. 

The first few times either Jordan or Taylor or both make an effort to include him in something, Ryan bristles. The thought of being someone they have to make a point of drawing into conversation makes the burning stretch of his quads and triceps feel like a slight tickle. He doesn’t want to be someone they have to try to accommodate. His being new to the team is one thing, but he won’t have them going to extra lengths for him and he’s prepared to say as much if it becomes an issue. 

But every time he looks for an excuse to make it one, he comes up empty handed. 

There aren’t any awkward pauses when they draw him into conversation and nobody looks at him like he’s stupid for a single thing he says. They don’t make him feel like he’s playing catch up and Ryan can’t find anything forced in the ways they reach out for him. It takes Taylor about ten minutes to master the art of pinching Ryan and Jordan simultaneously when they’re all bunched up in the line for the weigh-in and when they duck back into the locker room to gear up for on-ice practice, Ryan notices that about one third of the things on the shelf in his stall are actually his. 

Sam wanders by when Ryan is shaking his head at the body spray he’s holding, body spray that definitely is not his and he shrugs when Ryan looks up at him in absolute confusion. 

“They tend to … spread out, I guess? They’re pretty good with the boundary between the rest of the team and whatever it is that you’d call whatever it is that they do, but I guess they’ve adopted you as one of their own. Say goodbye to personal space, man. Tough break.” 

He’s grinning as he walks away and Ryan wonders if maybe they’re all fucking with him. If they’ve been doing it since he got here. That would explain a lot. But all he can really do about it is nothing at all, because they’ve got a scrimmage to win. It’s their first of the training camp, Ryan’s first with the team and a whole lot is at stake here. 

Ryan puts the body spray back where he found it and heads out to prove himself on the ice. 

 

____

 

Their squad doesn’t exactly slaughter their opposition, but it’s not far off. Ryan, Taylor, Jordan, Ladi and Jeff take on Sam, Hemmer, Jonesy, Whits and Pecks, with Dubes in net for them and Ryan’s team scoring on Khabi. They play an easy paced game for fifteen minutes but their shots on goal are no joke and in the end they win by six. 

“If you weren’t on our team, I’d be worried right about now,” Khabi says before he skates off the ice, leaving Ryan to pick up the pucks as usual. 

He’s expecting it when Taylor reappears to help, but neither of them are expecting it when Jordan joins them. 

There’s a brief awkward pause - their first, really - when Jordan appears at the edge of the ice again, already yelling to ask Ryan if he wants some help before he sees Taylor out there with him, lobbing pucks right at Ryan under the guise of doing just that. 

“Um … or not, I guess,” he says and turns to leave again, but before Ryan can stop him, Taylor does it for him. 

“C’mon Ebby, three sets of hands are better than one, even if they’re Ryan’s” he yells at Jordan’s retreating back and Ryan wonders out of the three of them, how many are holding their breath right now. Maybe it’s just him. 

But Jordan turns around and comes out to help, and it’s a huge fucking deal. There’s something almost raw about the three of them skating around out there, goofing off more than doing what they’re supposed to. It’s not like practice, when they can’t acknowledge any potential weirdness, but it’s not like when they’re away from practice either - Taylor and Ryan are nowhere near whatever territory they’ve been slipping into when Jordan isn’t around and it’s clear to Ryan that however Jordan and Taylor are handling still living together, this; here and now, is the most honest they’ve been about how they feel. And they’re not even talking about it. 

There’s a tension in the air, a total lack of coordination between Jordan and Taylor that isn’t forced and isn’t purposefully ignorant of their distance. It feels good, and it feels productive, but it isn’t enough. 

“Hey do you two have to be anywhere? I was thinking we could work on our calling?” 

Jordan and Taylor share a look, and then Jordan shares a look with Ryan. They both know Taylor thinks this calling thing is a total waste of time since the three of them clearly don’t need any help in finding one another on the ice, but the coaches think it’s something they should work on and Ryan is looking for any excuse to make them communicate, even if it’s on hockey plays instead of on the state of things in their household. 

But to Ryan’s surprise, Taylor agrees and they get in a solid forty minutes of them racing up and down the ice, finding increasingly impossible angles and completely absurd ways to pass to one another, only yelling at the last minute who they’re passing to. They play as a triangle, eyes on one another at all times, and the longer they go the easier it gets. By the time the team’s session at the rink is almost up, they can predict before it’s called where the puck is going just by looking at whoever is passing, even when it’s Taylor sending Ryan a rink-long saucer pass from behind the net, or Jordan setting Taylor up for a deflection off the end boards. 

It’s not like they’re in tune with one another mentally or anything, it’s just that their instincts are by and large the same. Ryan has always had a great head for the game and he can look at Jordan and know by how he’s holding his stick that if Ryan were in that stance, he’d be about to pass to Taylor. He can tell by the way Taylor leans where his shot is going to be aimed. Jordan and Taylor have played together for longer than he has, so it’s no surprise that they can read one another so well. What’s most surprising and exciting about the whole thing is how quickly they pick up on Ryan and how well he serves as a conduit between them. Taylor and Jordan might pause between rounds, might stop to chirp one another or Ryan or grab a drink or hook an extra puck, but Ryan keeps it moving whenever it lands on his stick, feeding what he’s given back to where it came from, or on to where it’s meant to go. 

By the time they’re back in the locker room, jostling for space while they get dressed even though they’re the only ones still there, Ryan doesn’t just feel like they’re not going to extra lengths to make him feel like he fits in - he feels like his efforts to make them fit together better are already paying off. 

 

____

 

With one relatively successful week of training camp under their belt, the team is rewarded with a day off. The not-quite-approved night out that goes hand in hand with that goes unspoken, but they all hear permission loud and clear anyway, so it isn’t a problem. 

Ryan spends about an hour stressing out about it while he decides what to wear. This is an important night for him. It’s not only his first official team outing, but coming on the heels of the day he and Taylor and Jordan had at the rink, it’s kind of a make or break kind of moment. It takes him forty minutes to decide whether or not to wear a button down over his t shirt, and he only gives up on trying to make his hair do something new after ten minutes instead of the usual thirty seconds. By the time he’s grabbing his keys and heading downtown, the only thing Ryan really has going for him is how in the end the process of getting ready had made him more freaked out about his outfit than the potential stress of tonight. He’s wearing dark jeans and new shoes that are already pinching, but he’s feeling pretty confident about the choices he’d made on the threadbare white v-neck t shirt and navy blue button down left open with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. 

When he gets to the bar about half the team are already there and like three of them wolf whistle at him, so that takes care of his nerves almost immediately. He’s so busy laughing and rolling his eyes as he finds a seat next to Jonesy that he doesn’t even notice that Taylor and Jordan aren’t here yet. 

It’s definitely different, being out on the town with an NHL team. It’s nothing like nights out with the Rebels, in both positive and negative ways. On the one hand, the atmosphere with this team is a lot calmer, and Ryan definitely feels more at home with the steady pace of conversation and no-one chugging their drink or throwing back shots. But he can’t help but feel slightly out of place, too. Different in a way that no-one but him is really acknowledging, almost suspended beyond the rest of the team, strangely, in a way that even he can’t pinpoint the source of. Ryan has always felt older than he really is and he’s always been treated that way too so it’s not an age thing. Roster changes can happen so often and so instantly at this point in their careers that it’s not the fact that he’s new to the team, either. Someone is always the new guy and you get used to that both as the new guy and the guy who has to keep an eye out for him. With the changes already set in motion and still in planning for this team, everyone knows Ryan is here to stay for quite a while and everyone Ryan has talked to is just as invested in sticking around for the ride. There’s a definite sense that every player here tonight and here in this city is there because he wants to be and that’s one of many reasons for Ryan’s pride in this team, for having been picked for it. 

Even though he knows it’s not the case, Ryan feels like he was chosen by the guys that sit now on either side of him, the hands that beat against his helmet. 

It’s only when Jordan and Taylor finally arrive that Ryan can see the source of his discomfort. 

They’re late and they’ve obviously had a fight, but just the sight of them settles Ryan. 

Taylor trails after Jordan into the bar and they head to opposite ends of the little grouping of booths that the team have taken over without saying a word to one another. Neither of them look for Ryan and when he’s not right there in the middle of whatever’s happening between them, Ryan can see how the rest of the team react to it. There’s a noticeable dip in volume when they arrive and the conversation that resumes once they’ve both sat down and looked expectantly at the people they’re sitting with is forced and almost too loud. Sam, next to Taylor, shakes his head and looks away instead of turning to Taylor. Whits slips an arm around Jordan and squeezes his shoulder, but Ryan catches the sigh he heaves when he pulls away. 

Ryan can’t exactly tell by looking at them what happened or what was said, but the way they’re dealing with it is clear from their faces. Taylor’s shoulders are up, his head hung low between his shoulders and he looks exhausted again, tired and weak with it. Jordan’s jaw is set and his hand is white knuckled around his beer, but the glare he’s working hard on doesn’t fool Ryan. Jordan’s eyes are nearly bruised from lack of sleep and Ryan probably isn’t the only one who has noticed how his hands tremble when he has to rest his head in them, sitting in his stall after practices. 

Both of them are wrecked by this. They’re doing a good job of keeping it together and their game isn’t suffering because of it, but Ryan is looking for the cracks and it seems like even when he’s able to pick them up and put the biggest parts of them back together, the pieces are still covered in breaks so fine that they only show up under strain. 

It’s not Ryan’s responsibility to put them back together and he’s not sure he’s even volunteering for the job, but he does want to see them in one piece again, whether that’s in a relationship or not. He doesn’t look at them, apart and miserable, and think ‘I’m going to make this better.’ He sees them as they are right now and he knows that that’s not how they’re supposed to be. Ryan isn’t interested in responsibility or duty, he only wants to do everything he does with this team _right_. 

And Taylor and Jordan sitting on either side of him, too far away and further still from one another, all biting smiles and brittle laughter is nowhere close to right. 

Ryan didn’t make a choice to get invested in them, although he couldn’t say he wouldn’t have had it come down to that. It’s not a case of helping or not helping, or even helping at all. They don’t need him. This doesn’t feel like something Ryan is doing for someone else. It feels right for them and right for Ryan. Good in a way that erases that distinction completely. 

Ryan sits and watches them force conversation with their friends and teammates and he wants to go and sit next to them and say nothing at all, if necessary. He wants them to know that he’s there if they need him, but that it’s up to them whenever and however that is. 

Ryan’s discomfort returns in the face of division, because as they are tonight he can’t be next to both of them at once. He has to make a choice and that’s what he’s been dreading. 

 

____

 

Taylor seeks him out first. 

He comes up behind Ryan while he’s at the bar and Ryan doesn’t hear him approaching. He knows it’s Taylor because he recognizes the weight of Taylor’s hand on his hip and the fact that Taylor doesn’t think twice about putting it there and Ryan suddenly wishes he hadn’t come out tonight. He wishes he’d stayed home and found a way to convince Taylor and Jordan to come over and hang out. They could have avoided their fight and Ryan could have avoided having to stand here in the middle of a busy bar trying not to lean into Taylor’s touch because he doesn’t want to be distracted from making sure Taylor and Taylor’s ex-boyfriend are okay. 

“Hey, you okay?” Taylor asks, leaning against the bar at Ryan’s side and looking at him with concern. As much as Ryan appreciates the media training, he thinks he could really have used some sessions to help him deal with having that look turned on him. Taylor Hall is the sweetest thing Ryan has ever known and he has no idea what to do with that. 

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?” Ryan signals the bartender to double up his order and slides a beer across the bar to Taylor, making no move to return to the rest of the team when Taylor looks down at his drink instead of answering. 

When he finally looks up, Taylor’s smiling at Ryan. It’s a small, delicate thing and Ryan’s heart breaks a little bit more for the two of them. The three of them, maybe. 

“Where did you come from, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?” Taylor asks, head tilted, smile spilling over with the angle as he tips his beer against Ryan’s and kicks him gently in the shin. 

He walks away before Ryan can reply, but he has a feeling ‘Uh … Burnaby?’ wasn’t the answer Taylor was looking for, anyway. 

 

____

 

Instead of going back to where he’d been sitting, Ryan makes his way to Jordan’s side. 

For a while he sits and listens to the conversations going on around the table, contributing when he’s called on to voice an opinion or pick a side. Ryan knows that Jordan isn’t the loudest guy on the team on his most raucous of days, but maybe that makes it more obvious when he’s trying to stay in the center of things. A quick glance at their teammates tells Ryan that the general reaction to this is mostly pleased surprise, but Ryan can’t help but think about everything Jordan _isn’t_ saying. All he can really do is sit next to him, knocking his knee against Jordan’s every time he looks over at Taylor and his face falls, vehemently shaking his head and making ‘cut it out’ motions at Whits and Ladi whenever they drop hints about being Jordan’s wingmen if he wants to get laid. 

There are plenty of other people dispersed through the team’s tables at this point; friends that came out with them or friends they’re making right now. Taylor’s table is pretty much devoid of their teammates and only Sam is recognizable to Ryan among the crowd. There’s a beautiful blonde girl on one side of Taylor, a hipster looking guy on the other. Maybe they’re people he already knows, or maybe they’re just quality human beings he’s only met, because their conversation seems to have drawn him out of his shell. He’s laughing and animated, engaged in a way that Ryan hasn’t seen him be with anyone else since he got here. He looks how Ryan imagines he must usually look with Jordan by his side on nights like this and Ryan’s beer roils sour in his stomach at the thought. He’s angry, but not at Taylor. He’s angry and he can’t even tell if it’s for Jordan or himself. 

He makes a point to scoot a little closer to Jordan, needing that as much as he wants to offer it, and for the first time tonight Jordan initiates contact before Ryan can. He drops his arm so he’s leaning in to Ryan and ducks his head so his cheek is pressed to the round of Ryan’s shoulder. He looks up at Ryan through his eyelashes when he speaks and Ryan’s anger dissipates; becomes something else instead. 

“Taylor’s gonna be fine, you know.” 

Ryan frowns and slumps down in his seat a little, shielding them as much he can by covering Jordan with the tilt of his shoulders. 

“Probably, yeah. But what about you?” 

This is the first time he and Jordan have talked about it and that seems insane to Ryan. It’s been at the forefront of his thoughts since he got to Edmonton, a different version of it there even before he arrived. 

Jordan bites at the inside of his cheek and the twist of his mouth means that his bottom lip brushes against Ryan’s shirt. Ryan shivers and unrolls his sleeves even though it’s not cold in the bar. 

“You’re probably the only person who cares about that,” he says, not looking up at all, and even though Ryan knows that isn’t true, he knows the truth isn’t what Jordan wants to hear right now. 

Andy Sutton appears, huge and looming, to shoo Jordan over to the bar where Whits and Hemmer are waiting before Ryan can respond, and it’s a good thing too, because he has no clue what he was going to say. He should probably be half afraid of what he could have said. 

Ryan knows Andy is his teammate, one specifically tasked with protecting him, more or less, but he’s still an incredibly intimidating human being and Ryan should be forgiven for being a little jumpy around him, still. His instincts prove correct in this case when Andy slides into the seat across the table from Ryan and says, 

“So that looked cosy.” 

Andy doesn’t look like he’s about to flip the table over and murder Ryan, but Ryan can’t really be sure that he’s reading his expressions right yet. 

“It wasn’t … whatever it looked like. Like he’s … and Taylor is … and they’re …. I wouldn’t?” 

That’s not strictly true. ‘I won’t, if you’re telling me not to’ is really what Ryan means. Or maybe ‘they’re still in love with each other what could either of them possibly want from me.’ 

Andy leans across the table and Ryan definitely flinches, but he receives only a careful cuff to the back of the head for his troubles and it’s only mostly like being batted at by a lion. 

“I’m gonna trust that you’re a good kid, because they both seem to think you are, but they really don’t need anyone else hurting them right now. They’ve got that covered between them and I think you know that.” 

Ryan thinks about trying to explain that he’s not interested in hurting anyone, that he couldn’t if he tried. He wonders for a second how well it’d go down if he told Andy that everything he’s doing is done with good intention and that he wants to see them feel better as much as the rest of the team does. Maybe even more, somehow. 

But he can see from Andy’s face that Andy already gets that. When he looks over Andy’s shoulder to check in on Taylor, he accidentally catches Sam’s eye and Sam nods to Taylor and then shoots Ryan a goofy little thumbs up as if to say ‘all good over here.’ 

When he looks back at Andy, Andy is watching him with something Ryan thinks is approval. When he gets up to leave, he pushes the drink he’d carried over to sit in front of Ryan and nods at him as he goes. 

Ryan takes a sip and only wonders for a split second if it’s been poisoned. 

He takes a gulp when he realizes he’s just been given some kind of team approval. 

 

____

 

Jordan isn’t completely wasted by the time he’s delivered back into Ryan’s hands, but he’s definitely had enough to drink that it’s noticeable. He’s grinning and flushed, and when Whits leads him back over to where Ryan is talking to Dubes, he plops himself down into the seat next to Ryan, wraps an arm around his waist, leans in and all but faceplants into Ryan’s neck. Ryan is pretty sure he was going for a hug, so he graciously accepts it - rubbing Jordan’s back and smiling at him when he pulls away. When Ryan looks back around, Dubes and Whits have both vanished into thin air. 

Ryan had switched to water after two beers. From what he’s seen Taylor has done the same, so he’s assuming that Taylor’s going to be the one tasked with making sure Jordan gets home okay, but when Taylor comes over to them it’s to lean down and say lowly in Ryan’s ear, 

“Listen, maybe it’d be best if you took Jordan home tonight? You don’t have to leave right now or anything, I don’t want us to ruin your night, but if I try it he’s gonna get pissed. We’re not exactly in a good place right now.” 

His point is proven when Jordan sits up and all but snaps his teeth in Taylor’s direction. 

“What do you want, Hallsy? Didn’t you promise to stay the fuck away from me tonight?” he gripes and Ryan flinches. 

“I’m not here to talk to you, Jordan, so cool it.” 

“You’re at our table, you idiot. You’re the one who wanted some space, so why don’t you take it, eh?” That’s softer, a whipping tail end of anger like Jordan can only stay mad at Taylor for a sentence or two. 

It riles Taylor more than his anger had, though. 

“‘Our’? Sorry, I must have missed the part where you won Ryan in the fucking divorce. You don’t get to stake a claim just because he feels sorry for you right now. Grow up, _eh_ , Ebs?” he leans in over Ryan to hiss, and that’d be Ryan’s cue to step in. 

He pushes Taylor away gently, putting space between them. 

“Hey, I don’t feel sorry for anyone,” he says, frowning at Taylor even though he knows he only said it in the heat of the moment and that he’s not so much of a jerk that he really believes it or meant to say it, “But maybe Jordan’s right, maybe you should give him some space.” He adds a significant look that communicates his wish to avoid this situation developing into something else, and after a second Taylor nods and walks away. 

Ryan pulls his phone out of his pocket as surreptitiously as he can and fires off a message telling Taylor to meet him outside the restrooms in five minutes and when he looks up again Jordan is watching him, an expression on his face that Ryan can’t read. 

“You’re not … you know you don’t have to take care of me, right? Or Taylor.” 

Ryan rolls his eyes. 

“Who is taking care of anyone? I’m just hanging out with my teammates. And I’m having a great time, thanks for asking,” Ryan flashes Jordan a grin, and it only takes a second or two for Jordan to return it. 

After that it’s easy to get Jordan caught up in a conversation about his all time favourite World Juniors shootout moves, and that’s a topic they’ve all got something to say on, so by the time Jordan is up to his elbows in his hilarious hockey-crush history with Jonathan Toews, their table has become the center of a far more positive kind of attention again and it’s easy for Ryan to slip away. 

Taylor is leaning against the wall next to the restroom, hands in his pockets. His body makes for such an inviting contradiction of angles so often that Ryan is almost, almost immune to the draw of it. He still wishes he was arranging clandestine restroom rendezvous with Taylor for reasons not directly pertaining to Taylor’s ex-boyfriend; someone Ryan really cares about too. 

“I’m sorry,” Taylor says as soon as he spots Ryan, “I know you don’t feel sorry for Jordan and I shouldn’t have said that but he was basically all over you and _I_ wanted to be all over you and everything’s so messed up since we made out because nothing is actually any different, stuff is just better and easier and I don’t want to have to share, but I can’t watch out for Jordan right now and if he’ll let you then that’s the next best thing and I don’t want you to have to shoulder that, I don’t want you to feel like it’s always about us messing with you or expecting things from you because there’s really no ‘us’ at all anymore and you’re new to the team and you’re … jesus christ you’re a rookie, you’re a fucking rookie about to start your first season in the NHL, fuck. Are you okay? Do you need to talk about anything? Do you … is there anything I can do to help?” 

Taylor is looking at Ryan with his eyes so big and wide it’s alarming, and he looks half horrified, half like he’s about to try and recite the NHL rulebook by heart if Ryan asks him to. 

Ryan laughs so hard he has to hold onto Taylor’s shoulder when he starts to cramp up from the welcome, satisfying ache of it. 

He’s really glad that Taylor’s speech derailed the way it did, because if he’d kept talking about making out then they’d probably be doing that right now instead of laughing at one another when Taylor can’t help but join in. 

“I’m totally on top of it, but thanks for … whatever that was, seriously, thank you,” Ryan says, wiping tears from his eyes. 

Taylor shoves at him and pouts. 

“Shut up, I was just looking out for you. Or remembering that I’d totally forgotten to do that. Whatever. It’s not my fault that you’re freakishly composed about this and everything else. Crosby 2.0, eh?” 

“Yeah, right. So do you really think I need to take Jordan home? He can’t handle it himself?” 

Taylor’s mood quickly sombers. 

“Yeah. He’s … if he drinks much more he’s not going to want to stop drinking and then he’ll be a nightmare at training tomorrow. He’s obviously had enough to drink that he’s mad at me and willing to talk to me about it for once, so if I go back with him things will blow up. I can get Sam or Whits to try and take him back to their place, if you want, I just thought that … it seems like you’re sticking pretty close to him anyway and -” 

“No, no, totally. It’s not a problem,” Ryan says, not at all on board with the idea of trying to convince Jordan to go home with someone else, so he pulls his keys out of his pocket and tosses them to Taylor, who nearly fumbles them, “The passcode for the door is 6869 and I double-locked the apartment so you’ll have to turn the key twice.” 

Taylor stares at him. 

“I was gonna crash with Hemmer, but if you don’t mind …” 

“Why would I mind? I’m gonna sleep in your bed, so it makes sense that you sleep in mine,” Ryan replies without thinking about the implication or the thought process that that sets off in his own head. Really not the time, he reminds himself and he flicks Taylor in the forehead when his grin turns wolfish. 

“Stop that. And don’t even think about eating all my cereal, you jerk.” 

Taylor pockets Ryan’s keys and that’s him taken care of for the night. 

Now all Ryan has to do is take a drunk Jordan home. Simple. 

 

____

 

It’s easier than Ryan thought it’d be and that’s somehow worse than it would have been to argue about it.

All it takes is Ryan leaning over and quietly suggesting that they leave about an hour later and Jordan doesn’t even question the ‘they’. He’s morose-drunk by now, not saying much beyond quick goodbyes to anyone they pass on their way out of the bar, saying less still in the cab on the way back to his and Taylor’s place. 

When Jordan lets them in he goes straight into the kitchen to grab a drink from the fridge and when he turns around to face Ryan again he looks at him like he’s seeing him for the first time. 

“Oh, I … fuck, sorry. Uh. Welcome to our … welcome to mine and Hallsy’s apartment? Do you want a drink or anything?” 

Ryan doesn’t know what to make of Jordan apparently not even realizing that Ryan doesn’t generally accompany him home; hasn’t even ever been in this apartment before. He hopes it’s a mark of how comfortable Jordan feels around him already, but he’s got to wonder if it’s more about how locked up in his own thoughts Jordan is right now. Thoughts of Taylor and everything that’s gone wrong between them tonight and before that. 

Ryan is definitely insignificant in comparison. He can’t quite bring himself to be offended by Jordan’s confirmation of that. 

“No, that’s okay. Um … Taylor said I could sleep in his room, obviously, so that’d be …”

Jordan points him toward a door down the hall and to the left, and Ryan shuts it after himself when he gets to Taylor’s bedroom. He magnanimously grants himself a whole four minutes to sit on Taylor’s bed and feel sorry for himself. Being here in their apartment drives their relationship home for him in a way that he maybe wasn’t entirely ready for. It had been so easy to stop thinking about what they’re like behind closed doors, but seeing the space they share breaks down whatever barriers he’d put up around the place like they’re made of paper. This is where they live _together_ and even though they’re not technically, not anymore, Ryan wonders if any of them are successfully fooling themselves into believing that it’s for good. Taylor and Jordan might both be doing a better job of that than Ryan is, but it still feels inevitable to him. 

He has a feeling that the weight that thought sets knotting in his chest isn’t just tied to his hope that getting them back together is a task he’s up to. 

 

____

 

It’s already pretty late by the time Ryan shakes his head clear and pulls on a pair of sweatpants that he finds folded on top of Taylor’s dresser, but when he pauses by the bedroom door he can hear the tv on in the living room, so he figures he’d better check on Jordan before he goes to bed. 

Jordan has changed out of his jeans too and Ryan is taken aback by how young he looks, curled up on the couch in basketball shorts and a hoodie. 

“You okay?” he asks, before he can think about it. 

Jordan tilts his head back onto the back of the couch and speaks to the ceiling when he says, 

“Is it my turn for the emotional bonding? Time for my session now?” but he only sounds tired, not angry or unwilling, so Ryan goes with it even though it really isn’t what he came here for. 

“If you want,” he hedges, leaning against the door jamb with his hands in his pockets until Jordan sits up and sighs and beckons him over. When he gets to the couch Jordan drags him down and stretches out with his head in Ryan’s lap. He turns to face the tv, his cheek dragging against the soft well-washed material of Taylor’s sweatpants, and Ryan wonders for a second if Jordan had been the one to wash them, if he’s ever pressed his face to these sweatpants in a different way entirely. Jordan reaching up to curl his hand over Ryan’s thigh, just above his knee, doesn’t really help to derail that train of thought, but the depth of Jordan’s sigh does. 

He waits for Jordan to speak, but he doesn’t have to wait for long. Jordan pulls his knees up toward his chest, folding himself up as small as he possibly can, and he talks. 

 

_____

 

Jordan’s explanation of things is longer and wordier, deeper than Taylor’s. He’s still a little bit drunk, so he rambles and he’s brutally honest. But what Ryan isn’t expecting is how much sense it makes and how clear the entire situation becomes when he hears what Jordan has to say. They’re both right. Ryan can’t disagree with either take on what happened and why it went wrong. What really throws him is the fact that he can’t immediately see a way out of it, either. 

There hasn’t been any kind of miscommunication, no-one has done anything to hurt the other, or picked up on something the wrong way. It’s kind of the exact opposite and the only way Ryan can think to describe the reason for their break-up, having heard both sides, is to say that it happened because they loved each other. 

That shouldn’t make sense, but it does. 

Taylor didn’t want them to change each other. He wanted to be someone who made all the things he loved about Jordan - all the things that made Jordan _Jordan_ \- more, and never less. The longer they were together, the more he worried that the way they were becoming an ‘us’ was costing them the things that made them themselves. Jordan said that that was what being in a relationship was about; he didn’t mind losing a little bit of himself if it was for the sake of them building a life together. But Taylor refused to believe that that was a sacrifice they had to make and he couldn’t stand to see Jordan have to become less for him. 

Jordan thinks Taylor is being naive, but Ryan gets it. 

Even when they’re fighting, even when they’re pissed as all hell at one another and completely unintentionally catching Ryan in the middle of it all, he wouldn’t have them any other way. He thinks about what he’d feel like if he was in a relationship with either of them,and had to see them sacrifice a part of who they were to be with him, and he honestly wonders for a moment if the thought is going to make him throw up. He couldn’t be happy that way and he doesn’t fault Taylor for not being able to do it either. But he listens to it from Jordan’s point of view and he sees that clearly too. Jordan was in love with Taylor and he wanted to be with him in whatever shape that relationship took. Ryan could never fault Jordan for that. 

So neither of them are in the wrong. There’s nothing Ryan can see that needs to be corrected. 

He sits and thinks about that with his hand on Jordan’s shoulder and tries not to think about how he feels a little bit like he’s got Jordan’s heart in his hands. 

“Why … why do you care?” Jordan asks when neither of them have spoken for a while and Ryan knows before he opens his mouth that he can’t answer that question yet. 

“You’re …” not his teammates, not just that, “my …” his friends? Nothing else? Are they really ‘his’ anything? “I care about you both,” he settles on, and it’s not quite right, but it isn’t wrong and that’s enough for now. 

“But why?” is exactly the question he doesn’t want to hear. 

“I … honestly, I don’t know. It’s how I feel and I can’t help it. I’m sorry if I’m overstepping or if you don’t want to talk about -” 

“It’s not that, Ryan, it’s really not. We need to talk about it and it’s great of you to listen. I’m trying to figure out how far that goes, though. When is too much? When are we putting too much of this on you and when do we need to take a step back? You brought me home tonight. You kept an eye on me, on both of us, for the entire night. You know you don’t have to do any of that, right?” 

“I know,” is all Ryan can say, because he gets that and he’s both sad and a little angry that people keep reminding him of it. 

“But you’re sticking around? Not already wishing you could ditch us for Colorado?” 

Ryan rolls his eyes, even though Jordan can’t see it, and pokes him sharply in the ribs. 

“Please. You need me so much more than they do.” 

He means the team, the Oilers, and he’s pretty sure that Jordan knows that, but when he finally turns his head and looks up at Ryan, his head still pillowed on Ryan’s thigh and the tv long since muted and ignored, so he can watch Ryan’s face when he says, 

“We really, really do,” Ryan thinks at least one of them hears something else in that. 

 

_____

 

They splay out on the couch for a while longer, lying together in a way that’s just short of cuddling if you squint, until Jordan’s yawns become so long and jaw-crackingly wide that he can barely get a sentence out around them. They can sleep in as late as they like tomorrow morning, but there’s no real need for them to stay up any longer. None that Ryan can see, at least, until he slips out from underneath Jordan and finds that he misses the body heat and the proximity almost instantly. If he’d had more to drink, he’d be shamelessly begging to be let into Jordan’s bed right around now. 

The universe has the funniest and least funny ways of listening to him, he thinks, when Jordan stops him from heading off to Taylor’s room by grabbing for his wrist. 

“You can totally, totally say no if this is too much or too weird, but would it be weird if you slept in my bed? I just … Taylor and I have spent about ten nights total in this apartment sleeping in separate beds, and it takes me forever to fall asleep without someone next to me. I’m so tired, and it’s … you can obviously say no, but I haven’t been sleeping so well and I’d really like to not be alone tonight.” 

Ryan kind of wants to scream, or stomp his foot, because he’s supposed to say ‘no’ here. Everyone knows that. He knows it, Jordan knows it, everyone on the face of the earth and everyone who has yet to be born knows it. It’s not too much to ask, but it’s too much for Ryan to say yes to, and it’s going to be impossible to get out of Jordan’s bed tomorrow morning and walk away like this was just a favour. 

Ryan wants to make Jordan feel better any which way he can, but these days the most complicated thing about wanting to help Jordan and Taylor is how Ryan plain old _wants_ them too. It’s becoming an increasingly blurrier line to keep track of and stay straight on, but Ryan knows to his bones which side of that line sharing a bed with Jordan is on. 

So when he says,

“Sure, that’s okay,” and follows Jordan to his room, he knows he’s doing the wrong thing, and he wants that on the record. 

When he climbs into Jordan’s bed next to him, and lets Jordan slip an arm around around his waist and burrow down in against his back, Ryan knows this isn’t right. 

But it’s only his own intentions that make it wrong, and not in the way you’d think. Ryan wants them both, and there’s not a lot he can do about that. But it’s only Ryan’s wanting them back together that makes how easy it is to fall asleep in Jordan’s arms pretty much the worst thing in the world. 

 

____

 

When Ryan wakes up the next morning, it doesn’t take long for him to remember where he is. They’ve shifted through the night, and Jordan is the little spoon now - curled up in a ball in Ryan’s arms with his hair all over the place and a peaceful, sleep-soft smile on his face. He looks content, and starting his morning feeling fond of Jordan definitely does wonders for Ryan. It makes it easier to shelve whatever this was as a friend thing, a team thing. It’s not like it isn’t weird for them to be sharing a bed - they’re grown. But it’s also not like this isn’t something they all do in junior. When you’re 15 years old and see your family for two months out of the entire year, your teammates become family you’re not related to, and that clause is an interesting one. Ryan didn’t mess around with any of his teammates when he was a kid, but he’s shared a bed with more of them than he can count - out of both necessity and nothing like it. 

Jordan is going through something tough and the complete lack of personal space that generally surrounds hockey players seems to be something of an active overlap in Taylor and Jordan’s case, so Ryan really doesn’t have a problem with rolling carefully away from Jordan and padding off to make use of his shower. 

When he gets out, he wanders into the kitchen toweling off his hair just in time to hear his phone beep with a text message. 

_hey, i’m heading out with sam and whits today, is it cool if i grab some of your clothes?_

Ryan looks down at the sweatpants he’d borrowed without asking and wonders whether Taylor and Jordan’s idea of communal property is rubbing off on him, or whether Taylor is going the extra mile to ask permission to do something that he normally wouldn’t think twice about doing. 

_Sure, take whatever. I borrowed some sweats, hope that’s okay._

Taylor doesn’t respond, so Ryan figures it’s fine. He also takes Taylor’s plans for the day as permission to stick around and hang out with Jordan for as long as Jordan will let him. 

 

____

 

Jordan stumbles out of the bedroom about an hour later and basically lurches across the living room to drag himself onto the couch next to Ryan. 

Ryan tries not to smirk. 

“Headache?” 

Jordan groans and covers his ears with his hands, rubbing his forehead back and forth against Ryan’s shoulder and then pressing his cheek there instead, sighing. 

“Stop talking and judging, just sit still and be warm and nice to me.” 

Ryan can definitely do that. 

 

____

 

They spend the morning more or less the same way they spent the night before - laying on the couch. They’re both a lot more quiet this time and Ryan is pretty sure Jordan naps for a while, but it obviously helps because once lunchtime rolls around he’s able to get up and start making noise. He even manages to make and eat food. It’s miraculous. 

Neither of them bring up Taylor’s conspicuous absence, or Ryan’s reluctance to leave, but Ryan figures he’s covered on that front by Jordan suggesting that they spend the afternoon working out at the gym in their building. It’s not like Ryan couldn’t do with the extra opportunity to bulk up, so they spend a couple hours down there working slowly through their lighter weights sets, because it is still a day off. The gym is empty because it’s a weekday and they more or less have the place to themselves the entire time. 

They don’t talk much, other than to chirp one another’s taste in music to work out to, and all in all it’s a nice way to spend an afternoon.

 

____

 

Ryan showers in Taylor’s bathroom this time and when he shuts off the water he can hear Jordan speaking to someone on the phone. 

“.... me too. I know. It’s okay. We can talk about it later. …. … …. Well Ryan is still here, so we’ll probably order something? …. ….. …. No, sure, I’ll get your usual order and you can have it when you get home. … No problem, see you later.” 

It’s oddly formal, but he can only be talking to Taylor. Ryan is happy to hear them be civil to one another, at least, but he finds that he really doesn’t want to think about the state of things between them beyond that. 

Jordan is standing in the kitchen, dressed again after his shower, but his hair is still wet and he smells so good that Ryan experiences something like a kind of reactional whiplash. It keeps taking him by surprise, how one moment he can think of them as friends, ex-boyfriends he’s looking out for, and then in an instant they’re nothing more than someone standing right in front of him, someone he wants more than anything. It’s the difference between having your head so deeply in a game that you barely register your teammates by anything more than passing lanes, and stripping down out of your gear and being back with your friends, your family. Here it happens so fast that Ryan feels like he’s never ready for it, won’t ever get used to the whetted shock of change. 

It’s late afternoon by now, late enough in the day to be somewhere around the time they’d normally be waking up from a nap and thinking about pre-game meals, so Ryan isn’t surprised to see that Jordan is standing next to a countertop full of takeout menus. They all figure out pretty quickly what meals from what places they can eat without being crucified for it and Jordan and Taylor’s menus are in much the same state as Ryan’s - highlighted and scribbled on, earmarked and worn with use.

Ryan tries to think about Jordan and Taylor arguing over the decision, standing close together, heads bent low as they fight to decide. He thinks about them eating together and then watching tv together, getting ready to head out to the arena together and then coming home together after the game, climbing into bed tired and aching but together, _still_ together. 

When Jordan looks up at Ryan he forgets about context. Jordan starts to say something, but stops. His eyes drop to Ryan’s mouth and he looks away, biting his lip before he looks back down at the menus piled messily between the countertop and the palms of his hands. 

Ryan looks at Jordan’s hands too, and thinks _bad idea, bad idea, bad idea_. 

It takes them all of five minutes to figure out what food they want, and Ryan keeps his hands in his pockets, lets Jordan let him decide, and thinks about what he might do when he goes home; when he leaves after they eat. 

Jordan pulls open a drawer to stuff the menus back inside, and then he shuts it again with his hip, and Ryan leans in over the corner of the kitchen counter and kisses him. 

 

____

 

It isn’t awkward or fumbled or tentative. Jordan kisses Ryan like he’d known it was coming, like he’d been ready for it and waiting. He drags Ryan in between his body and the counter and keeps him there with his hands and his hips and his mouth. They trade deep, biting kisses until Ryan is panting into them, breathless more from want than exertion. Jordan pulls away to let him breathe, but he huffs a sound against Ryan’s throat that says he really isn’t happy about having to do so. He has his hands up under Ryan’s shirt, hot and insistent, and his tongue in the dip between Ryan’s collarbones. Ryan wants to give him whatever he wants, and only half because he knows that anything Jordan could want is something he himself wants more. 

Jordan kisses him again and brings his hands up to hold Ryan’s face in them, to touch the lines of his cheekbones and the curve of his jaw like he wants to remember it all. 

They break apart when they have to - when continuing would make it impossible to stop. Jordan takes half a step back but he lets Ryan move with him. He answers Ryan’s hands on his hips by keeping his face tucked in against Ryan’s, his nose against Ryan’s cheek and their mouths still meeting at the corner when he speaks, swallowing thickly before he does. 

“We should … um … we probably need to … you must be hungry. We should eat. I just need to go grab my phone and then we can …” 

His eyes are closed and when Ryan brings a hand up to settle loosely around Jordan’s throat, his thumb brushing up under his adam’s apple, he feels it when Jordan swallows this time. It’s so easy to drag his thumb higher, to push his fingers up into Jordan’s hair and tilt his head back, throat bared so Ryan can bend to press his mouth there. It’s a problem. It’s easy, and Jordan leans into it, and that’s a problem too. The very same problem, really. 

“Yeah,” Ryan says. “Yeah we should do that.” 

But then, “Or -” he adds, and Jordan takes a sharp breath, his eyes opening and going wide. Ryan thinks he’s read this wrong, he’s gone too far, he’s made a mistake. 

But then Jordan reaches for Ryan’s waistband. 

“Yeah, yes, or,” he says fervently, “ _or_ please.” 

 

____

 

It’s still late afternoon when Jordan takes Ryan by the hand and gets him spread out on his lap on the bed that they slept in together last night.

It’s bright in Jordan’s bedroom, the cold winter sunlight doing nothing to make the room and what they’re doing in it seem soft or hazy or muted. Jordan is all dark hair and pale golden skin underneath Ryan. He’s lean lines of tension sprawled starkly against the blue sheets, hard angles and rough hands. The line of his jaw is sharp and edged in shadow when he turns his face down into Ryan’s sternum, and the palms of his hands pushing greedily up underneath Ryan’s shirt drag a whisper of sound with them, his hands waking goosebumps where they touch Ryan’s skin. 

Jordan is the one to strip them of their shirts, and Ryan very quickly, very shockingly realizes that sitting astride Jordan’s thighs while Jordan pulls his own shorts down and off is Ryan’s favourite place in the whole world to be. He grumbles at Ryan when he makes no move to help or be at all accommodating, and having Jordan bitch at him for not being more proactive in getting him naked makes Ryan feel warm all over, fond and comfortable and happy. 

“I’ll make it up to you by letting you take off my sweats. Practice makes perfect, right?” he solemnly offers, and Jordan shakes his head and grins at him for all of five seconds before Ryan’s mirrored expression draws his attention back to Ryan’s mouth. 

Jordan’s hands are sure and not at all gentle in Ryan’s hair, gripping a fistful of it tight and angling Ryan’s head the way he wants it, working his tongue into the pleased parting of Ryan’s mouth, and then his hands are getting intimately acquainted with the span of Ryan’s pelvis, following the rise of his hips over and down into an effort that rids Ryan of his sweatpants and gets his ass in Jordan’s hands where he wants it. 

“Good job,” Ryan manages to murmur against Jordan’s mouth, getting nothing but a stinging nip to his bottom lip and a light, matching slap to his ass in answer, but Jordan goes easily when Ryan pushes him down onto his back. 

Ryan can’t look away from him. The feel of him is unbelievable, but it’s getting to watch his own hands on Jordan’s body that hits Ryan the hardest. Jordan lets Ryan touch him to his heart’s content, lies patiently beneath him and indulges in his attentions like he’s getting just as much out of it, even though Ryan can’t see how he possibly could be. Jordan’s body is hardly all that different from any other hockey player’s body, but the difference is that it’s Jordan, here in bed with Ryan, Jordan’s hips that shift and lead, falter and follow when he lets Ryan learn his body and how it moves under tongue, for direction from Ryan’s hands. 

When Ryan glances up at him, Jordan is staring at him like he’s the one that’s worth admiring. He’s watching Ryan wide-eyed and silent, chest heaving. 

Ryan leans down over him and presses a kiss to his chin, taps gently at his temple. 

“Everything okay in there? You look a little dazed.” 

Jordan goes up on his elbows to kiss Ryan properly, mouth working like he’s still hungry for Ryan even though he already has him. 

“Yeah, you’re - I wanted you. Want you. Forgive me if I’m kind of caught up in how stupidly hot this is.” 

Ryan thinks he’s teasing until Jordan pulls back and he sees the rising blush, the way he’s digging his teeth into his bottom lip and staring at his hands on Ryan’s hips instead of looking at him. The idea that Jordan is as into this as Ryan is is stirring to say the least. 

Stirring in a way that requires both immediate action and assurances, though. Ryan sits back up, channelling every little piece self control he’ll never have again to avoid thinking about the way he can feel the sticky heat of Jordan’s dick against his ass. They’re getting to that. 

“What are we doing here, Jordan? I mean … I know what we’re doing, but are you sure you want to do it? Because we really don’t have to. And if we do … I want you to be sure.” 

Jordan’s hands curved high around the insides of Ryan’s thighs feels like a kind of intimacy unlike any Ryan has known before. Other people have touched him like that before, but it’s never felt like this, never seemed to be something done with thought and intent. Done gently and not at all lightly. 

“I’m sure. I’m really sure, I promise. I want this,” Jordan’s voice and gaze are steady, and that’s already enough to win Ryan over, but still, maybe this is too far, it’s definitely too fast, and --

“I want you,” Jordan says, cupping a hand to the back of Ryan’s neck and tugging until Ryan bends down into him, bares his throat when Jordan trails his nose down under Ryan’s chin, “So can I have you?” 

That definitely does it. 

“Any way you want me,” Ryan grins, and Jordan laughs into the mark he’s sucking to the surface of Ryan’s skin. When he pulls away it’s to look up at Ryan in something like awe, his fingers touched to the sting and then tracing the line of Ryan’s throat, the span of his collarbones with slow, gentle sweeps. 

Jordan pushes Ryan over onto his back quickly and roughly, and when he settles his weight on Ryan’s thighs he does so heavily and without doubt. 

He reaches for lube from the drawer of the nightstand with shaking hands. 

When he looks at Ryan again, it’s with soft eyes and a shy, private smile. 

 

____

 

In Jordan's bed, they can hide from everything, but Ryan can't say he isn't aware of what they're doing; that he doesn't know that they shouldn't be doing it. In Jordan's bed they're honest, and they're open, and they tell one another things that no-one else could ever understand, all without saying a word. Maybe Jordan needs to fall apart, and maybe he trusts Ryan to catch him now, but that doesn't make it right.

It's not wrong, and it's _good_ , it's so good it makes Ryan feel like his mind comes untethered from his body; his skin doing the only kind of thinking he wants to do with Jordan that afternoon.

Ryan loves the the combination they create and the things they can do when they stop thinking and let the way they feel – the way they want to feel – lead them in action.

Ryan loves what they make, together.

But that doesn't mean it’s right.

Jordan leads Ryan to his bed, and Ryan lets himself be lead.

 

____

 

Ryan is surprised when Jordan gets his fingers slick and dripping and reaches behind himself. He’d just assumed. Not that he minds. Kind of the opposite, now that he’s actually thinking about it. 

“Wait,” he gasps, torn between watching the flex and shift of the tendons in Jordan’s forearm as he works himself open and watching the tremble through Jordan’s shoulders instead, “Don’t you want - are you sure you -” 

Jordan doesn’t look at him, keeps his head tipped back up to the ceiling and his eyes closed in either concentration or pleasure. 

“Mhmm,” he nods shakily, going up onto his knees so he can change the angle, use the leverage to work his hips back down onto the press of his fingers, “I’m sure.” 

“If that’s okay,” Jordan adds as an afterthought, falling forward over Ryan, propped up with one hand in the pillows next to Ryan’s head. He’s too close for Ryan to be able to think clearly. He’s too much for there to be any which way Ryan doesn’t want him. 

“That’s fine, yeah. Yes. Sure,” Ryan manages to mumble, tilting his head back to meet Jordan’s mouth because he has to when it’s right there for the taking. His breath stutters in his chest when Jordan works a hand between them, wrapping his fingers around both of their cocks and leisurely squeezing, taking his time and not really going anywhere with it because he seems fixated on making out with Ryan, the touch more like simple pleasure he’s taking in the feel of them together. Ryan doesn’t think about how maybe it’s strange for Jordan, touching someone who isn’t Taylor. 

Ryan makes a move to flip them over, only slightly less because he wants to get Jordan under him than because he thinks that’s what Jordan wants from him - he thinks Jordan wants to be taken care of, wants a simple, easy pleasure that feels good and isn’t too complicated or too big a commitment - but Jordan holds him down; presses him into the mattress with a sweat-slick palm in the center of Ryan’s chest and his thighs tight around Ryan’s hips. 

“Like this, okay? I need --” and Jordan is smiling in concentrated bliss when he moves forward, his knees a grounding pressure on either side of Ryan’s waist, tucking his toes under Ryan’s thighs like every point of contact between their bodies has to be sought out and made. Ryan’s hands on Jordan’s hips get progressively careless as Jordan shifts back into Ryan’s dick, reaching behind himself to hold his cheeks apart so the sticky head of Ryan’s cock rubs blunt and slippery through the mess of lube Jordan has stroked into himself. 

Jordan chokes on a breath when the head of Ryan’s cock stutters over the rim of his asshole and Ryan doesn’t think about pushing into him bare, he doesn’t think about whether Jordan would let him, or if Jordan wants him to, or if Jordan just doesn’t use condoms with Taylor anymore and has forgotten that it isn’t Taylor who is about to fuck him. He reaches for the condom he tipped out of his wallet into the sheets when he was getting undressed and he rolls it onto himself, follows it with a palm slick with the lube Jordan discarded next to them. He doesn’t look at Jordan while he does. Maybe it’s selfish, and maybe it’s ridiculous to be momentarily embarrassed to do anything to remind Jordan that he isn’t someone else. Maybe what they’re doing is wrong. But Taylor kissed Ryan first, and Ryan feels nothing but _impatience_ at the prospect of getting his dick inside Taylor’s ex-boyfriend so if that makes Ryan a terrible person then it’s going to be a big month of changes for him and he isn’t going back. 

Ryan grips his cock tight around the base, holding it steady and mentally cycling through stats while Jordan slowly, steadily sinks down onto it. His eyes are closed again, still closed maybe, but he reaches blindly until his fingers find Ryan’s hand on his hip and closes a hold over Ryan’s wrist. His eyelashes flutter as soon as Ryan is fully seated inside him, and he’s breathing hard through his mouth, his tongue caught between his teeth like he’s trying not to make noise. 

And the thing is, they’re like colleagues or something close to it, and they’ve known each other for just a little over a week, most of which has been spent navigating the wreckage of Jordan’s brand new breakup with someone he still lives with, someone who had his tongue in Ryan’s mouth two days ago, and now here they are, and Ryan is balls deep in Jordan. Ryan would be lying if he said it wasn’t slightly awkward. Ryan would be lying if he said he cared, because it’s not the bad kind of awkward where you’re too nervous to be honest, or too incompatible to make it work. It’s the kind of awkward where everything _but_ what they’re doing is off, circumstances broken and fragmented and pressing in on them a little bit, but only adding to the pressure they’re working up together, because every time Ryan reaches for Jordan, Jordan is right there waiting for him and not letting Ryan go. 

So when Ryan is gritting his teeth and waiting for Jordan to tell him it’s okay to move, it’s easy to greedily take a moment to compose himself. Because when Jordan finally opens his eyes and looks down at Ryan, licks at the corner of his mouth and takes a deep breath and says “Come on, fuck me,” Ryan doesn’t have to think about anything but this. 

It’s the perfect give and take, Ryan underneath Jordan like this. Pinned between the bed and Jordan’s weight, Ryan can only push his hips up minutely, grind his dick into Jordan in deep, dirty little thrusts. Jordan’s doing all the work, the muscles in his legs bunching and flexing as he rides Ryan. Tomorrow Ryan is going to be wrecked by the thought that he knows what the insides of Jordan’s thighs look like, knows what they feel like when he’s being fucked, but right now all he can think is ‘yes more more please _god_ yes.’ Every time Jordan lifts up Ryan’s hips buck with him, follow on instinct because he’s desperate to stay inside. Jordan is so hard his dick is slapping wetly against his belly, and Ryan holds it there, touches the hard heat of Jordan’s cock with the palm of his hand and thumbs pre-come off the head, licks it off his own hand just to see how Jordan will react to that. 

He stops moving, which isn’t what Ryan was hoping for at all, but it feels so good to be completely inside him, filling him up like maybe Jordan likes having Ryan’s cock in him as much as he likes the effort it takes to get it there. Ryan is back to reciting stats in his head again when Jordan gets a hand around the back of his neck and pulls until Ryan is leaning up on his elbows, close enough now so Jordan can fall forward and kiss him. His tongue is soft in Ryan’s mouth and Ryan can taste the faint tang of blood, doesn’t think about how he’s making Jordan feel so good that Jordan bit his own fucking tongue. 

“I wanted -- want you so bad. Felt so guilty about it. But I want to do this all day, don’t stop, Ryan. Come on,” Jordan says, fingernails biting into Ryan’s wrist, “Make me come. So good for me, exactly what I wanted, you’re so fucking --” he babbles and trails off, sitting up again, going up on his knees so he can sink back down onto Ryan’s dick, lifting his hips into it when Ryan gets a hand around him and starts to jerk him off, his hands tracing Ryan’s abs, mapping the motion of his pelvis greedily, like he’s going to be quizzed on it later. 

When Jordan comes, Ryan drinks in the shaky little ‘ah’s that precede it and holds onto the way he half shouts Ryan’s name with a dark and greedy sense of satisfaction. It’s with something like a possessive kind of arrogance that Ryan sucks a trickle of Jordan’s come off the back of his hand and flicks his sweat wet bangs out of his face, brings his knees up so he can push into Jordan with more force but slower, _adamant_. Jordan hangs on - literally, one hand on Ryan’s shoulder, the other in Ryan’s hair, cradling his skull with a tenderness that makes Ryan sees stars, makes him drag Jordan down to him by the hips and hold him there as he comes inside him. 

Jordan stays exactly where he is while they catch their breath, and it feels like it takes hours to get them past panting. Jordan winces when he lifts up off of Ryan, but once he’s dealt with the condom he lies down next to Ryan, seemingly satisfied to leave the clean up at that, for now. 

As their bodies start to cool and a chill settles over him, Ryan is the one that feels empty; the beginnings of guilt settling cold in his stomach until Jordan reaches for him and pulls until Ryan is the one on top, blanketing Jordan almost entirely. All other considerations dissipate when Jordan tucks his face into the side of Ryan’s neck and hums and says “We’re cuddling, then we’re showering, and then we’re doing that again,” his hands gentle and already familiar at the small of Ryan’s back. 

Maybe that can be as far as Ryan needs to think, today. 

 

____

 

They don’t stick to the schedule Jordan has set for them, not exactly. 

Instead of cuddling, showering and a repeat performance, the end result is something more along the lines of cuddling, which leads to making out, which leads to Ryan finally getting his mouth on Jordan’s dick, the product of which Jordan scoops off of Ryan’s tongue and uses to finger him, not because they’re out of lube, but because he likes the way Ryan’s ass looks with his come making it shine wet and greedy around his knuckles. That’s how Jordan explains it, at least, and who is Ryan to argue with that. Showering happens, and they even manage to keep their hands off one another long enough for dinner to finally happen, but the latter half of their meal is eaten in haste, sweet and sour sauce licked from one another’s fingers and lips because they’re not just gluttons for their food. Jordan leans in and eats the last of Ryan’s spring rolls right out of his hand so he can shove a paper towel at him and hustle him back to the bedroom. 

Jordan comes without either of them touching his dick the second time. They spend what’s left of the afternoon and eat up most of the evening rolling around in Jordan’s bed, taking their time to get to know one another’s bodies now that they’ve got the basics down, and it’s all sleek building friction, instinct encouraged and followed until Ryan is spooned up behind Jordan, mouth open against his shoulder as he wrings Jordan’s orgasm out of him with nudging little thrusts that play on Jordan’s prostate until he’s swearing in prayer and reaching back to hold Ryan deep and still as they come, their bodies shaking through pleasure together. 

Cleaning up is quicker and far more efficient the second time around; a lot of the playfulness gone, but giving way to something akin to intimacy rather than any kind of distance or coldness. They barely say a word to one another, but Ryan struggles to keep the smile off his face and Jordan doesn’t even try. Every time they’re within a three foot radius of one another they’re touching again and it’s not going anywhere this time, but it doesn’t need to; it’s enough. Whether this is something that happens again or not, they can’t treat it like a one night stand because they’re going to see each other every day. Regardless of what happens next, Ryan doesn’t regret what they’ve done. 

They don’t talk about today, or tomorrow, and neither of them mentions the elephant that’s probably gonna arrive home soon. 

Before Ryan walks out the door Jordan grabs him by the collar of his shirt and kisses him hard, presses his entire body in along Ryan’s like he doesn’t want to let him leave. 

“I -- this was great. _You’re_ great,” he says, as he steps back with clear reluctance and Ryan hears the lack of promises in that, but he didn’t come here looking for those and he doesn’t want them now, either. 

He answers with a much too heartfelt “Yeah I … today was the best,” and he mostly means that in abstract terms, but when Jordan lifts an eyebrow and bites at a smirk Ryan realizes he means it specifically, too, because he’s no blushing virgin but Jordan made him feel like he was _some_ kind of virgin before this afternoon, so Ryan leaves blushing in a warm, pleased way that sums up the experience pretty succinctly. He’s intensely proud of himself for getting Jordan out of his own head and caught up in something new and fun instead, and maybe sex is an altogether unorthodox way to help a new friend get over a break up, but Ryan’s happy, Jordan’s happy and they didn’t do anything wrong, so Ryan doesn’t feel guilty. 

He doesn’t. 

Taylor texts him that night to thank him for taking care of Jordan and Ryan doesn’t text back and he doesn’t feel guilty. 

 

____

 

Their schedule the next day is mostly full of media and promo stuff, which on paper should be easier than training sessions on ice or off, but in practice they’re all pretty equally awkward in front of a camera without skates on even before you mix in learning and reciting lines. It doesn’t take too long for the chirping and general hilarity of the situation to sink in and leave them all with lowered inhibitions and it’s easy enough to make a complete fool out of yourself when you get to watch your entire team do the same, but they’re a different kind of exhausted when they’re released back into their natural habitat late that afternoon and by the time they file off the ice after a quick scrimmage Ryan is already thinking fondly of his bed. 

It hasn’t been that difficult to avoid Taylor and Jordan all day. Ryan really isn’t interested in adding more lines to the ones they’ve already drawn between them, but although he knows how he feels about them right now (insofar as that it’s a generally positive and unfortunately pining-adjacent feeling) he also knows that he’s crossed an entirely different kind of line with both of them. He’d cross it again in a heartbeat, but their needs kind of trump his wants right now, so he figured it was for the best to leave it up to them to come and seek him out if they want to. He’s about as easy for them as it’s possible to be, in a wide variety of ways, and they’re the ones with complications to limit, so he’s fine with setting the face-off up in their offensive zone for the time being. 

They drift in and out of his space all morning and the positive tension that buckles them becomes fire when they’re on the ice, because when the three of them play together there’s no time to think or be careful, no time for Jordan and Taylor to hesitate in showing one another the same kind of easy, automatic trust that they’re both feeding Ryan. Ryan pays rapt attention to how they play together, how their blind passes are always on point and rebounds on their shots don’t seem like rebounds at all because they’re instantly picked up by the other, received and rifled home like it was intentional to miss in the first place, a one-two timer that’s twice as tricky and much more effective than any single shot either of them can make. 

For all that they’re cautious with one another on all matters that don’t concern the puck, Ryan can clearly see that that’s not for the effort of having to forge a brand new connection, the old one severed and buried in their breakup. Their caution is a second guessing consideration, a needless over-handling that is itself the root of the problem. 

Their nexus is still alive and well and exactly the same in their personal interactions as it is so clearly showcased in their game. It’s failing in the first instance only because they’re assuming that it’s already gone and acting according to that misconception; making allowances for a degree of separation that never occurred, not really. 

When they play together, Ryan acts to feed from Taylor to Jordan what neither sees is still true without him, so Ryan’s priority now has to be figuring out a way to achieve the same result beyond hockey, because if he can do it there then he can do it anywhere. 

Ryan doesn’t think past that goal, yet. He doesn’t think about what happens when they realize they’re using him to support something that’s alive and thriving independently of him already. He doesn’t think about what happens then. 

 

____

 

Andy Sutton invites everyone over to his place that evening for a nice quiet night of video games, but since a lot of the guys on the team are still trying to make the most of downtime they can spend with their families or partners before the season starts for real, only a handful of the younger guys opt in; the youthful Oilers core and almost all the OKC call-ups. It should be a welcome opportunity for Ryan to get the know the guys he’ll probably be spending most of his free time with for the foreseeable future, whether he gets to stay in Edmonton or not, but once he’s gone home and napped and showered and changed into fresh clothes, keys in hand and ready to head out again, he finds himself intimidated by the prospect of hanging out with Jordan and Taylor in a smaller, more intimate setting. There will be at least eight other guys there, and they’ll be playing video games so it’s not like anyone should be paying any kind of strict attention to Ryan or anyone else, but maybe his hesitation is more specific than that. Maybe he’s afraid that Taylor or Jordan will pick up on how he reacts to them or pick up on something in his behavior around them that will leave one or both of them feeling like Ryan has betrayed their trust. He doesn’t think he has and he’s confident he could make a good case for his argument, but he’s less confident that he could make them stick around to listen to him, not at all confident that he could win them back from that instant moment of hurt given how much they’re hurting already. 

Being around them and keeping his cards close to his chest is a delicate, difficult thing and maybe what it comes down to is that Ryan doesn’t trust himself to stay faithful to his own objective when his heart and his mouth and his hands keep breaking rules to get close to them. 

He’s still dithering by his front door when someone knocks on it loudly, scaring him half to death. His heart pounds with fright for a second before he opens the door and finds Jordan standing on the other side of it, wearing the usual off duty hockey player uniform - sweats and a hoody - but still looking a lot like the wet dream Ryan narrowly avoided having this afternoon. Ryan’s heart does a pathetic little jump and then skips a beat entirely when Jordan grins at him, because Ryan has never claimed to have it together. 

“Hey,” Jordan says, only mostly softly, “I wanted to make sure you weren’t gonna try and bail on this.” 

Super hot _and_ super intuitive, not to mention someone Ryan has had excellent sex with. Wonderful. 

“Nah, I … actually,” Ryan laughs, “Yeah, I was thinking about it.”

“Tut tut, rookie,” Jordan shakes his head and Ryan absolutely does not in that moment think seriously about dragging Jordan into his apartment and telling him all about what a bad, bad rookie he’s been in great, begging detail. He thinks about it very seriously. “Come on, grab a jacket and get your game face on. If I have to go to this thing then you do too.” 

Ryan does as he’s told and pockets his car keys when Jordan leads him over to his truck instead. He wonders if he’s trampled all over those boundaries yet again when Jordan sits staring at him instead of backing out of his spot, but when he speaks it isn’t to scold Ryan and Ryan’s isn’t sure he’s not kind of disappointed by that. 

“You’re not -- you weren’t trying to avoid this because you were avoiding me, right? Because of yesterday?” 

Even if Jordan hadn’t brought it up and so soon after the fact, Ryan wouldn’t have thought that he was embarrassed by it or regretted it, but he can’t say it doesn’t thrill him a little bit to hear Jordan reference it so easily, so warmly. 

“No, of course not. I really don’t want things to be awkward for any of us, and it’s not at all weird for me, but I don’t want it to be weird for you, either? Like … however you wanna handle it is totally fine. If you don’t want to talk about it or need to forget it happened for a while, that’s --” 

“Hey,” Jordan interrupts, affronted, “No. No, Ryan.” He reaches across the console to grab Ryan’s hand and Ryan doesn’t blush, doesn’t hold on too tightly in return. “I’m glad that we did that. Honestly, it was the most fun I’ve had in a really long time and I would definitely be interested in a repeat performance if you are, but I don’t want you to think that you’re just this, like, brand new booty call for me, or whatever. I like you a lot, I like you so much, and --” Ryan stops him by squeezing his hand, reaching to run his hand up the bare skin of Jordan’s forearm. 

“Then that can be enough for right now, right? Everything else is kind of complicated, but I feel the same way - I really like you and that can be as complicated as it has to get until we figure everything else out, yeah?” 

“Yeah, that’s -- this is definitely more than enough. Just like this,” Jordan agrees, leaning in to kiss Ryan sure and slow; the best way to seal a deal. 

They hold hands for most of the drive over to Andy’s house and Ryan feels strangely off balance when they’ve got to pull apart as they walk inside, but the way Taylor frowns between them when they arrive reminds him that he’s always going to be off balance around them, because when he’s between them, he’s out of place. 

 

____

 

It’s a good night and it’s a resolutely terribly night. 

Jordan doesn’t stick by his side the entire time or keep looking out for him or checking in. 

But he does wander into Ryan’s space, just to touch him for a second in some small, quick way that doesn’t look like anything, but feels like _something_. When he’s crossing the impressive den Andy has set up for the occasion, on his way to the mini fridge that’s probably bigger than Ryan’s actual fridge, Jordan trails his fingertips across the back of Ryan’s neck. Ryan looks around at him the first time it happens, startled by the touch before he realizes whose it was, but Jordan isn’t looking at him or looking for a reaction. He does it twice more that evening and doesn’t seem to notice that he’s doing it, or that it’s anything out of the ordinary. When he drops into the seat next to Ryan to take his turn at NHL ‘11 he sits so close to him that Ryan has to lean forward to avoid knocking elbows with him, but Jordan doesn’t scooch further away on the couch, smiles at Ryan when Ryan lifts his hips to pull his phone out of his pocket and then drops back down as close to Jordan as he’d been before. When Ryan wins his first round (because the competition is much, much tougher in Edmonton when it comes to video games too, go figure) and throws his arms in the air in victory, Jordan laughs and ducks in so that Ryan’s arm comes back down around his shoulders instead. It’s maybe a little much, and Ryan casts a wary glance around the room to make sure they’re not attracting attention, but everyone is too caught up in their own games to notice; probably wouldn’t see anything in it if they did. 

The great and terrible thing about it is that Jordan clearly isn’t doing it on purpose. He’s seeking out the heat of Ryan like it’s a subconscious need, like Ryan is some kind of familiar territory for him now. Ryan doesn’t wonder whether that happened before or after they had sex, because he doesn’t care. What matters is that it did happen and Ryan is entirely disinclined to move away from Jordan or do anything that discourages him from reaching for Ryan every single chance he gets, any time he wants. 

If the circumstances were different, Ryan might worry about Taylor specifically and what he might think if he caught sight of them leaning into one another’s space on the couch, touching one another in ways that might suggest to him that he’s got something to worry about; something to wonder about at the very least. 

But Taylor barely glances at either of them that night. 

Taylor spends the entire night being very loud and very bright, all wildly gesturing hands and sunny grins for everyone who isn’t Jordan or Ryan. It’s not like he’s scowling when he looks their way, but maybe he would be if he ever did. 

Ryan doesn’t wonder, doesn’t feel guilty. Doesn’t miss him when he’s in the same room. 

 

____

 

About half of the OKC call ups get cut the next day. 

This is Ryan’s second camp of the summer and he’s been nervous for both, but the further he progresses and the further the numbers drop, the more his nerves turn into a completely different kind of tremor - the adrenaline-sweet fear that comes before a fall that changes everything, the sheer terror of knowing that after this, nothing is going to be the same again. There’s no going back and Ryan never had or trusted any kind of guarantee that he’d get this, he knows before he even has it that keeping won’t for one minute be easy, but since the moment he pulled on his first Oilers jersey he’s known that he’d never stop trying, never stop fighting to keep it on his back. 

So here he is and he’s made it this far without having to so much as bare his teeth to anyone who wanted to take it all back. The only people who have gotten close enough to try are Jordan and Taylor and every minute he spends on the ice with them feels like a stitch sewing his jersey to his underarmour. The seconds he spends with them outside of practices, in their home and his, pitch the needle deeper still; so when he thinks about losing the Oilers logo from his chest he feels the pull right down to his bones, deeper than his skin, further and more than just a question of his muscle. 

But there’s a balance to be struck between Taylor and Jordan too, now that Ryan isn’t fighting for a number or a jersey or a spot, but for this team and for _them_ and everything the three of them could mean to this city. 

Ryan follows them out onto the ice for another practice that he knows will find him caught between them, because that’s where this team needs him to be. The coaches and the fans carved that spot out for Ryan long before Ryan was drafted, so here he is and here is where he’ll stay - exactly where he needs to be. 

Still with choices to make. 

Taylor and Jordan have history here and newer, sharper history still ringing loudly between them. 

Ryan can cut through the middle of the ice and push toward the net, dragging them behind in support and sacrificing himself and his shot to pass it off and drop it back, leaving it for them because he’ll have put them in a better position to find the net. 

Or Ryan can let them lead and let their chemistry be the nucleus they depend on to get them there. He can follow it and feed it and stay ready and open for anything it gives back to him. He can stay close and stripped and willing until it drags him in and swallows him whole. 

The beauty of hockey is that he doesn’t have to choose one method or the other in practice or during games, now or ever, because the way the three of them play together requires no thought or lengthy discussion and is never simply one way or the other; it’s a shared vision and a three-tilt drive that is as effortless as breathing and always exactly what they intend and see it to be. 

The problem only starts when they walk out of the locker room and go their separate ways, the choice of where and when and how those paths next cross one they each have to make. 

Ryan can stay where he is, right next to the storm of everything Taylor and Jordan were and will be again, caught up in it only when the wind picks up for one reason or the other. 

Or Ryan can push his way into the very center of it, the eye of the thing itself, and hope and hope and hope that they follow. 

Maybe they will and maybe they won’t, but Ryan is already half gone, determined and alone. For now. 

 

____

 

Ryan doesn’t get a chance to talk to Jordan or Taylor alone for long that day, because they arrive together and they leave together and they both hang back after practice to help him herd the pucks. 

But Taylor re-appears in the locker room about two minutes after he follows Jordan into the showers and corners Ryan with shampoo bubbles behind his ears. 

He’s also wet and naked bar the towel around his hips and the one slung around his neck, so it takes Ryan a second to register his fear that Taylor has somehow guessed that Ryan and Jordan slept together. There’s a distinct possibility that Ryan might be about to get punched, and for several reasons, but he still stalls out on how a rivulet of water that runs down the tendon of Taylor’s throat hiccups over the inviting jut of his collarbone. If he’s about to get knocked out he wants to enjoy his last moments of consciousness as much as he possibly can. 

“Hey, my eyes are up here,” Taylor says, joking, but when Ryan immediately meets his eyes he can see he’s only half-joking, because he also looks a little unsure, like he’s not entirely secure in his ability to flirt with Ryan anymore, like he thinks maybe he’s not allowed to now. That makes Ryan sad. 

“I know that,” Ryan says patiently. “But why would I look at your eyes when I can look at your ridiculously hot bod instead?” 

It’s cheesy and it’s taking the wrong kind of chance when there are still about five guys left in the locker room who wouldn’t take too kindly to hearing Ryan get fresh with Jordan’s ex-boyfriend when Jordan is ten feet away, but what those guys don’t know can’t get Ryan hurt and it proves more than worth the risk when Taylor blushes and bites at his lip in a half-assed attempt to curb his grin. 

“I wanted --” he starts, smile dropping and the ‘i’m trying really hard to be serious’ furrow appearing at his brow. “I just wanted to make sure that we’re okay. We are, right? Because I thought we were, but you’ve been spending a lot of time with Jordan and that’s cool, he’s a great guy, so are you, it’s good to make friends, but if … if you’re Team Jordan now, that’s okay too.” The look on Taylor’s face says that that’s very much not okay at all, though, and Ryan wholeheartedly agrees. 

“No. _No_ Taylor. I mean, yeah, I’m totally Team Jordan, but I’m Team Taylor too. We’re … I wish we’d been able to hang out more this week, but I’m so wiped after practice and -” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. The poor rookie is gassed after a couple scrimmages. I get it. You’re pretty -- ‘diminutive’ is what the scouting reports said, right?” The grin Taylor is showing him now is one of his brightest, with a sharp twist of sly delight. It’s one Ryan has already begun to think of as his own. He’s _fucked_. 

“Not even. And wasn’t it you sitting on his ass on the ice ten minutes ago, when the ‘diminutive’ rookie raced him to the net and won? Being lighter just makes me faster and better. Sorry about any misconceptions you might have had otherwise, buddy.” Ryan makes sure to punctuate it with a sweet smile and Taylor looks like he wants to argue, maybe wants to wrestle their way to agreement. Or distraction, at least. 

But he settles for leaning in close, instead, and saying low in Ryan’s ear. “If we weren’t in the locker room right now, I’d lift you up against that wall behind you and show you that you’re _fun-sized_ , Nugent-Hopkins.” 

Thankfully, he walks away before Ryan can challenge him to prove his point. 

 

____

 

Training camp gets a lot more serious when it’s whittled down to the central core of players who will play in the season opener, who will fight from then to keep that spot. 

It hasn’t been all water breaks and making shavings angels in the crease so far, not by any means, but today the smiles and laughter are reserved for immediately after turns in drills, strictly for goals and served with equal amounts of pride, relief and vicious determination. When they punch one another in celebration it feels like the affectionate form of an ice bath; it’s further preparation disguised as jubilation. 

The longer camp goes on, the lighter the space around Jordan and Taylor becomes. Ryan has already taken a lot of the tension from there and the long days with breaks that don’t last too long seem to make it easier for them to stay inside the energy the three of them have created together - a wired, bright kind of purpose that’s too much for three players so young, but barely enough to _be_ enough for them. They’re always going to want more and they’ll never stop working for that. 

One afternoon five or six days into the camp, when the locker room was a little more crowded and much, much louder, someone had played the practical joke of switching everyone’s stalls around, presumably to enjoy the confusion that resulted and persisted when they’d all trailed off the ice and spent the next twenty minutes trying to find their stuff. It had been meticulously done, everything but the hastily taped up stickers listing name and number moved to a brand new spot, and maybe Ryan had been especially tired that afternoon, or maybe Taylor or Jordan had been pressed for time and had someplace to be, because when everyone else had criss crossed back and forth across the locker room laughing and chirping and steadily righting the order that had been in place that morning, Ryan and Taylor and Jordan had shrugged at one another and the three new stalls they’d found themselves standing in front of. It was easier this way, with all of them settled side by side by side in the corner, their things combined and spread out across one another’s new shelves the same way they had been on the old ones, Ryan in the middle in what had been Taylor’s spot before, Jordan and Taylor bracketing him under Teubert and Hemsky’s stickers. 

Hemmer had come and huffily ripped off his name and number before retreating to Horcoff’s side and firmly smoothing them onto the stall that had been Ryan’s before the confusion, muttering something to their captain that didn’t worry Ryan at all, because Horcs had laughed until he was essentially guffawing. 

Tubes had stuck his name on Jordan’s old stall, and stuck his number on Jordan’s forehead, but none of them had really expected anything less of him. 

Ryan had been waiting since before that day to reach a level of overlap with Taylor and Jordan that was too much or too close or too soon. 

He’s still waiting today, when Jordan and Taylor walk into the locker room for practice and touch him hello instead of saying it, Taylor hip-checking him as he stretches to empty his pockets up onto his shelf next to Ryan’s shower gel, Jordan righting the collar of Ryan’s underarmour and dragging his thumb up over the topmost knob of Ryan’s spine for no discernible reason at all. 

Ryan returns the greetings by brushing his forearm against the bare skin of Jordan’s waist when he lifts his tshirt off, gripped in an instant with a fierce and possessive urge to touch what has been his and will be his again. By holding every moment of eye contact he can coax Taylor to make with him, because they haven’t talked since Ryan fucked Jordan in the bed he still shares with Taylor, will hopefully never talk about that at all, but Taylor is still right there and Ryan doesn’t want him thinking he can go anywhere else without Ryan following. 

They’re both better than they were yesterday or the day before that, hardly recognizable compared to the bits and pieces they were in that very first day of camp, but instead of moving away from Ryan together, or retreating to their own space to figure out what comes next, they’re drawing him closer still every single day and it’s making everyone in the locker room look at Ryan like he’s _why_ they’re better now, and like there’s more work to be done there, before he can walk away. 

Sooner or later the time is going to come for Ryan to test the theory by withdrawing. And maybe Taylor and Jordan are ready for that, even if they don’t seem to realize it. But Ryan isn’t. And the closer he lets them pull him, the more he finds himself wanting to stay. 

 

____

 

That afternoon, Taylor, Ryan, Jordan, Hemsky, Gagner and Smytty beg off of weight training a little early so they can head out for a quick pre-practice scrimmage. It’s Hemsky’s idea, because he’s always hungry to be out on the ice in a way that Ryan totally shares and suspects he’ll still share with the guy ten years from now, whether they’re playing on the same ice as teammates or as opponents or not at all. 

They very quickly get into a very serious game, because Taylor doesn’t have a speed that isn’t eleven and Smytty is one of the most competitive guys Ryan has ever played alongside, it’s like his tank is bottomless. 

It’s Jordan, Ryan and Taylor against the other three, obviously, and Ryan is so busy trying to defend their net without taking shots that will put him on injured reserve before the season even starts that he misses it. Taylor nabs a puck that Ryan has just deflected from danger with the padded knuckles of his glove and the other three were so focused on the potential goal that they forgot about defence and didn’t register Jordan ready and waiting to streak towards their totally open net. Ryan was so busy trying to do everything at once that he didn’t notice either and is too late to get in on the play. Taylor follows quickly behind him and Jordan has enough of a cushion to wait for him to catch up. They skate down the ice passing the puck back and forth half a dozen times and never once coming close to fumbling it. Jordan passes it off for Taylor to rifle it home and he cockily goes top shelf when he definitely doesn’t have to. It’s a chance Ryan wouldn’t take, not even in a meaningless scrimmage, but Taylor goes bar down and makes the shot, the clang of iron ringing out loudly just as the rest of their teammates start to stream out onto the ice. Half of them are heckling Hemmer and Smytty and Gags for being losers, and the other half are heckling Jordan for giving up his shot, but Ryan doesn’t register much of anything that’s said, because he’s standing stock still in the crease, stick held limply in one hand while he watches Taylor and Jordan’s goal celly. 

Once Taylor had made the shot, Jordan had reached for him and jumped clear off the ice, up into Taylor’s waiting, outspread arms. Jordan is back on his feet now, but he still has his arms looped up around Taylor’s shoulders and Taylor has tossed his stick aside in favour of grabbing Jordan tight around the middle. 

Through all of this, cellys have been the one thing that Taylor and Jordan have tried not to let their personal stuff get in the way of, because it’s a team thing, it’s not just about them. But from his vantage spot on the other end of the ice, Ryan thinks it looks an awfully lot like this one can’t really be about anything else. 

They cling to each other for what looks and feels like forever, and even though when they eventually do separate it’s to skate down to Ryan and hug him from either side, Ryan skates to center ice to join the rest of the team and takes a knee wondering if this is it. If he’s done what he set out to do. 

 

____

 

It’s a great practice, probably the team’s collective best yet, even though Hemsky is still grumbling about the scrimmage loss and shooting pucks a little harder at Ryan and Jordan and Taylor than he is at anyone else. 

Taylor and Jordan don’t suddenly take to ignoring Ryan, but there’s an evident sense of greater ease between them. They include Ryan, still, but it doesn’t feel like they’re relying on him. 

Ryan sits in his stall after his shower and towels his hair off for much longer than is necessary, thinking about what it will mean if they’ve finally realized what he knew all along - that he was only giving them something they for some reason didn’t want to see they still had without him. 

Tubes is the one to drag him out of his head. He does this by sitting on Ryan’s lap. 

Ryan pulls the towel off of his head and tosses it into the bin in the middle of the floor, shifting his feet to make it more comfortable to have a huge defenseman sitting across his knees, but finding he doesn’t have the energy to try and shove him off. 

“Seriously, Tubes?” 

“Seriously, Nuge. So tell me, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, how are the wonder boys? How are your lineys holding up under the pressure of your limelight?” 

Ryan rolls his eyes, but doesn’t resist it when Tubes slings a heavy arm around his shoulders, really settling in. 

“I’m pretty sure you know them much better than I do, since you’ve known Ebs for years and Hallsy for much longer than I have.” 

“Semantics,” Tubes dismisses with a wave of his hand. “You’re like … one of them in a way that I’ll never be. They get you, you get them, you’re a happy family of prodigies or whatever. Which is not to mention the fact that any time I do manage to catch them having mistakenly wandered into a place where you aren’t, all they’ll talk about is you. Remind me to say ‘I told you so’ when the three of you sign the first ever career-length contracts to stay here together forever, because they’re never going to let you get away, now.” 

On any other day, Ryan probably would have laughed and blushed and shrugged those comments off only to spend the rest of the day thinking about them, but he’s a little on edge right now, he feels like his rope has been cut and he’s scrabbling for something. 

“Them, maybe. But they don’t need me. You get that, right? Like -- I didn’t do anything special. I didn’t do anything any of you guys couldn’t have done. I’m not some kind of Hall and Ebs whisperer. I just showed up and did my best to be good enough to stay.” 

Tubes gets up, but he doesn’t walk away, stands next to Ryan ruffling his hair instead. 

“You said it, man - I know them better than anyone. And I know they didn’t need you to fix them. But I also know what they were like before you came to town and how fucking stubborn they both are. You didn’t fix them, but you made them want to be better. And maybe that’s more important, anyway.” 

Ryan is flummoxed. 

“But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done if they hadn’t broken up, or if they weren’t here at all, if I’d been drafted somewhere else. I didn’t do anything special, so why was I good for them when no-one else could figure it out?” 

“ _Are_ good for them, Ryan. Present tense, please. I can’t say I’m an expert on this or anything else, but it seems to me like some things are just meant to be, if you’re lucky enough to find ‘em. It’s a big deal, so don’t fuck it up, kid. Keep it up and you’ll have a really good thing going.” 

“Keep what up, though! I’m not - this is just the way I am!” Ryan half-shouts after Tubes as he disappears through the throng back across the locker room. 

A vague and not at all helpful “Exactly!” is all he gets in return and he’s pretty sure it wasn’t even Tubes who said it. 

 

____

 

Tubes is the last guy to get sent back down to OKC that afternoon and Ryan doesn’t feel a little more alone in this whole thing. He doesn’t feel the added pressure of Tubes’ expectations like a fresh bruise, either. 

 

____

 

When Ryan’s phone chimes with a text that evening, he’s half expecting it to be some kind of vague and prophetic threat from Tubes. That or his mom reminding him to do laundry. But it’s neither. 

_heyy, are u home? i’m driving back from whits place, thought i could drop in those clothes i borrowed._

It’s pretty out of the ordinary for hockey players to ever return the things they end up borrowing from one another, clothes especially, but even the quick squeeze of dread that pulses in Ryan’s abdomen isn’t enough to dissuade him from wanting to see Taylor. It’s not like he had plans for this evening, anyway. Maybe they could order in, watch a movie. Or … do something that sounds less like a date. 

_Sure, I’m here. Drop by whenever._

 

____

 

Thankfully, Ryan is still only debating changing his clothes when Taylor shows up ten minutes later and much earlier than Ryan expected him. 

“Hey, come in,” he says, but it’s not necessary because Taylor is already stepping inside and dropping the neat pile of Ryan’s clothes on the floor so he can kick the door shut behind him and push Ryan up against the wall of his hallway. 

Ryan doesn’t even think about it, just reaches to get a hold of Taylor’s biceps so he can pull him closer and lean into the kiss in a way that makes it deeper rather than bridges distance. Taylor hums in approval and for some reason that Ryan really doesn’t want to further examine, kissing him feels like breathing for the first time in days. Ryan pushes one hand into Taylor’s hair, his thumb stroking back and forth across the hollow behind the curve of Taylor’s jawbone and feels like he could happily drown in how right this is, how _good_ it feels. But when Taylor dips his head to suck kisses to the line of Ryan’s throat, Ryan catches sight of the pile of clothes on the floor and he remembers why Taylor had borrowed them in the first place - what Ryan had been doing when he had - and he has to pull away before everything goes horribly, horribly wrong instead. 

“Hey, what’s -- is this ... is this not okay?” 

Ryan covers his mouth with his hand and breathes against his palm for a second, trying to think. 

“It is. I mean. It is for me, but.” 

Taylor reaches out to touch Ryan’s hip and Ryan has to fight to stay still because he can’t convince himself to step back and he won’t let himself step forward. 

“I know it’s … soon, but like. I don’t expect anything from you, you know that, right? I didn’t come over here for that. I just wanted to drop your stuff off, but when I was walking up I couldn’t stop thinking about the last time I was here and then you opened the door, and I just - your face. Your fucking _mouth_. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to look at you and not want to kiss you. Is that - can we not do that anymore?” 

They probably can’t, and that’s Ryan’s fault. 

“We can and I want to, but you’re not going to want to once I tell you what I have to tell you.” 

Taylor laughs. He laughs like it’s funny to think that there’s anything at all that could make him not want to kiss Ryan and Ryan doesn’t know if he can do this. He has to walk away from Taylor, but lets him follow him through to the living room, and down onto the couch. Ryan doesn’t talk for a moment, and Taylor doesn’t push him; sits next to him and waits. 

Ryan hasn’t thought about what he’d do in this situation, because he hadn’t thought he’d be in it. He’d thought that best case scenario, Taylor and Jordan would get back together again and neither of them would have any need or want for his company. Worst case scenario - the very same. Every day since he last kissed Taylor he’s thought of the possibility of that happening again as being less and less likely and now here they are and Ryan has to break the news to Taylor that he slept with his ex-boyfriend the same week he made out with Taylor, because he knew they’d get back together and he’d just wanted them however he could have them until he’d never get the chance again. 

“Taylor …” How the fuck does he say this? How can he explain it so Taylor can see that Ryan did what he did because he’s struck dumb by the two of them, but never ever wanted to hurt them? What combination of words will convey that he’s sorry about the way things have turned out, but not for one second sorry for anything that happened? 

“Taylor, I slept with Jordan. And I know that you guys are going to get back together, because you belong together, you still love each other, so I’m sorry if anything I’ve done will make that harder, but I’m not sorry for anything else.” 

Ryan delivers most of the speech to his own hands, folded up in his lap, and when he’s done and dares to lift his head to look at Taylor, Taylor is looking right back at him like Ryan just told him that the sky is blue. 

“You … you don’t seem surprised. Has -- did Jordan tell you?”

“No,” Taylor shrugs. “No-one told me and I am surprised, but like … I don’t really see what you fucking Jordan has to do with us making out.” 

How is it that Ryan is the one most shocked and derailed by this conversation? 

“So you don’t care? It doesn’t matter to you? But what about you and Jordan? You’re not exactly falling all over yourself to contradict me in thinking that you’re getting back together, so. Is that happening? Where does that leave things? I’m not helping you cheat on him.” 

For the first time tonight, Taylor looks angry. 

“Do you honestly think I could ever do that to him? Because if you do, then I don’t know who you think you’ve been getting to know these past couple weeks, but it wasn’t me.” The combination of disappointment, anger and sadness on Taylor’s face is killer. 

“No I don’t think you’d do that, but I don’t understand what you’re saying, Taylor,” Ryan says, reaching for his hand because words don’t seem like enough. “You and Jordan are going to get back together, but in the meantime you don’t mind at all if I sleep with him and you’d also like to keep making out with me?” 

Taylor twists his hand out from underneath Ryan’s, but only to flip it and lace their fingers together. 

“I always want to make out with you. Which is why I can’t really blame Jordan for taking you to bed if that’s something he gets to do. I don’t think we’ll get back together, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that, some day and I haven’t ever lied to you, Ryan, I don’t plan on starting. I love Jordan, but we didn’t work out and maybe we’ll try again somewhere down the line, but right now I like you, I want _you_. And if you want me, that’s great. If you want Jordan too, I can’t judge you for that, I’ve got no claim to either one of you.” 

“And that’s -- that’s okay? You don’t have a problem with any of this?” 

Taylor sighs and brings their joined hands up to his mouth, kisses Ryan’s knuckles as he speaks. 

“I wish it was different. I wish Jordan and I were still together, or that we’d never been together at all so that when you arrived we wouldn’t have all of this mess to work around. And I don’t wish any of that. I -- all I know is how I feel, Ryan. I wish it didn’t have to be so complicated, but I wouldn’t change the things that make it complicated if I had the chance. Wanting you doesn’t change how I feel about Jordan and how I feel about him does absolutely nothing to make me feel any less for you. I don’t know how it works that way, but I know it does. Can you understand that?” 

And Ryan can. Because how he feels about Taylor doesn’t change how he feels about Jordan. Sleeping with Jordan didn’t feel like something that superseded or contradicted his feelings for Taylor. 

“Yeah. I think so,” Ryan says, and then takes a huge breath that comes out as a shaky little laugh. 

Taylor smiles at him and pulls at his hand until Ryan is leaning into him, and then he presses his mouth to the back of Ryan’s neck, hiding a kiss in under his hairline. 

Ryan still can’t completely believe that things are are simple as Taylor seems to think they are, but for the moment at least he only has to take Taylor’s word for it, and Taylor’s words make it pretty easy to turn his face up into Taylor’s, to let his eyes slip shut when their mouths find one another again. 

In no time at all Taylor has Ryan on his back on the couch, his thighs spread open into a cradle for Taylor’s hips. Taylor is heavy above Ryan; solid in a way that Ryan would envy if the contrast between their bodies wasn’t something he really enjoyed. He reaches up for Taylor and pulls him down; fists his hands in Taylor’s shirt, drags him down by the belt loops of his jeans, pushes his fingers up into Taylor’s hair and _tugs_. Taylor comes where he’s wanted, and god, does Ryan want him. They make out like they’re both teenagers until Ryan is in serious danger of coming like this and Taylor probably isn’t too far behind him; hard against Ryan even through their jeans, panting against Ryan’s mouth in between kisses and skimming his hands along every single inch of skin that’s bared to him by Ryan’s clothes like if he covers that territory and doesn’t push for more the patience they’re alluding to will be somehow true. 

Things come to something like a natural pause and Taylor holds himself up over Ryan, gaze roving from Ryan’s eyes to his mouth to the mark Jordan left on his throat and back again, but making no move until Ryan can’t breathe under the weight and heat of the look and has to reach for him again. 

When Taylor eventually pulls aways for real he keeps Ryan at arm’s length - leaning up on the palms of his hands rather than his elbows - and they’ve been making out for so long, mouths locked together so the small sounds they make have been muffled and low, that his voice almost startles Ryan. 

“I should probably go.” 

Ryan skims his hands up over Taylor’s forearms, up under the sleeves of his t shirt so he can curl his fingers around his biceps. 

“Should you?” 

The look Taylor gives him is dazed, a wide-eyed, open-mouthed look of surprise and confusion. 

“I mean -- yeah? I … should. I should, right?” 

“You should if you want to,” Ryan says, because he doesn’t want Taylor to leave, but it’s not like he’s going to be mad at him if that’s what he needs to do. His hands start a slow retreat from Taylor’s skin and Taylor shivers but doesn’t stop him. That might be because the second his fingers are free from Taylor’s shirt, Taylor sits up on his knees and grabs one of Ryan’s wrists in each hand, pins them down to the couch under his knees. 

“I don’t. Leaving is pretty much the last thing I want to do right now.” 

Ryan can’t move his hands, doesn’t want to, but he can tilt his head back at Taylor, make his neck look long and bare and still proudly bearing the work of Jordan’s teeth. He does and Taylor’s jaw tightens. Ryan smiles unkindly. Daring. 

“Yeah? You should tell me about some of the things higher up on that list. Maybe I can help you out.” 

Not even Taylor’s weight on them is enough to keep Ryan’s hips from jerking up off the couch when Taylor’s teeth take him up on his wordless offer and suck a stinging bite below Jordan’s, a ‘me too’ footnote to Jordan’s ‘I was here.’ 

“You sure about that?” When Taylor pulls back he looks serious again, considering. “It wouldn’t be … too much? Too weird? What with Jordan?” 

The mention of Jordan, the implicit reminder of all the overlap between the three of them and who and how they’ve touched lately doesn’t get Ryan harder. It doesn’t. He shrugs as best and as convincingly as he can. 

“You’re the one who said it doesn’t have to be. It’s not for me. It’s simple. I wanted him and I want you.” 

Taylor grins and lets the expression stretch sharply, smug, when Ryan can’t meet his eyes because he’s caught up in watching Taylor’s mouth instead. 

“And do you always get what you want, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?” 

Ryan has a feeling that now is not the time to be humble. 

“Almost always. But not undeservedly,” he assures Taylor, tugging one hand free so he can reach for the buttons on Taylor’s jeans, “I work very hard for everything I get.” 

 

____

 

They literally trip out of their clothes on their way to the bedroom, and it doesn’t occur to Ryan until Taylor is three fingers to the knuckle deep in him that this isn’t Taylor’s first time in his bed. 

This time he’s braced over Ryan on one hand, with his jeans still half on, caught by the span of his thighs. Ryan means to be helpful and use the heels of his feet to push them off, but Taylor’s fingers are thick, and his back is bare and endless under Ryan’s hand, there’s no hope at all that Ryan will take the other out of Taylor’s hair in case that leads him to the misconception that he can take his mouth away, so what happens instead is that Ryan sucks sharply on Taylor’s tongue when his fingertips find Ryan’s prostate. 

“Come on, Taylor,” Ryan starts, ready to beg, but Taylor only smiles, leaning in to tug at Ryan’s lower lip with his teeth. 

“I really, really like the way my name sounds when I can feel you say it,” he says, licking at Ryan’s mouth but not kissing him properly, just teasing. 

Ryan has no idea why he thought this might be any easier, because he knows Taylor, and he knows all too well by now exactly what he’s like (merciless; sweet in ways that turn perfectly cruel) but knowing and conceding are two different things and Ryan never gives in without a fight. 

“I had Jordan just like this, you know,” he says conversationally, the hand in Taylor’s hair gripping tightly, now, _pulling_. “All spread out for me in your bed.” 

Taylor goes rigid between his thighs, and his fingers still, but Ryan knows to wait, knows there’s no way he’s reading this wrong. 

He’s right. 

Taylor slowly lifts his head, dragging his gaze the entire length of Ryan’s body in a slow, blazing trail that brings goosebumps to Ryan’s skin. When their eyes meet, Ryan wonders if he was too right. Taylor’s jaw is clenched and his face is all straight lines, all hard angles that frame his eyes, narrowed and focused on Ryan’s, locked on target.

Ryan looks right back at him, not blushing or letting anything close to embarrassment make his eyes wide or blinking. 

And in an instant, Taylor is moving again, sliding down the bed, dragging his mouth and fingers and tongue down over Ryan’s neck, his chest, his sternum, his abdomen, rubbing a cheek across his pelvis. 

“Did he bottom for you?” Taylor asks, voice low, quirking an eyebrow, not letting Ryan break eye contact by punctuating the question with the sweet, warm incentive of his tongue cradling the head of Ryan’s cock. He tilts his head, still looking up at Ryan, and draws Ryan’s cock into his mouth. He sucks, slow and wet, and Ryan can only nod, gritting his teeth. 

Taylor pulls his mouth away with an audible pop and licks his lips, grinning, “I thought so. The teeth come out when he’s getting fucked, he can’t help it,” he says, nodding at Ryan’s throat. He drags his tongue up the length of Ryan’s cock in a long, sloppy lick and Ryan bites into his own lip, struggles hard to pay attention to what Taylor is saying. 

“I bet he made you watch him prep himself. He acts like he’s impatient, but he knows exactly what he looks like, riding his own hand. He does it because he knows what it does to us,” Taylor says, and then he’s _throating_ Ryan’s cock, taking it as deep as he can and giving him his fingers again, pushing wet digits inside Ryan and sucking him into the tight heat of his mouth at the same time until a shout gets caught in Ryan’s throat, makes him reach for a fistful of Taylor’s hair. 

Ryan lifts his hips into it and fucks Taylor’s mouth, mostly shallowly, because Taylor lets him. 

He wants to answer Taylor. He wants to keep talking about everything they’ve both done with Jordan, but thinking about it is too much as is. It’s too good to think about Jordan when Taylor is right there, far too easy to get in under the overlap and think about the three of them together - Jordan sitting on Ryan’s chest, feeding his dick into Ryan’s empty, greedy mouth while he fingers his own ass open, Taylor fucking Ryan while Jordan watches, Taylor jerking himself and Jordan off when Ryan is inside Jordan. It’s too easy to imagine. It’s close enough to taste, and Ryan has always been practical and level-headed, but one after the other Jordan and Taylor have made him mindless, senseless with his need for them. Together, they’d pull him apart. 

“Come here,” Ryan says. “Up, _up_ ,” he demands, pushing at Taylor’s shoulders until Taylor pulls off, breathless and flushed and with lips fat and used, shining slick with his own spit and Ryan’s pre-come. He crawls up over Ryan, puts his hands on either side of Ryan’s head and stares down at him, not touching him, smirking and amused. 

“What? Did you need something? What are you so impatient for, Ryan?” 

Ryan holds Taylor’s face in his hands and kisses him until neither of them can breathe, until Taylor’s arms are shaking, holding himself up. 

“Please,” Ryan says; pants, really. “Please, Taylor.” 

“Jesus,” Taylor swears, going to his knees between Ryan’s spread thighs so he can pull his boxers and jeans down. He kicks them off the bed, his hands already occupied with a search for the lube that’s hiding in the sheets, the condom Ryan had tossed there earlier. “Don’t … you can’t … don’t ever say ‘please’ to me again, or I swear to god I’ll give you whatever you’re asking for, I won’t even think about it.” 

“Good to know,” Ryan laughs, but it falls off into a moan when Taylor rolls the condom on and stays kneeling between Ryan’s legs, slicking himself up with his eyes closed and his head tipped back to the ceiling, his teeth biting into his bottom lip. He’s godlike. He’s tanned and ripped and bigger than Ryan in all the good ways, body _honed_ for hockey, and thinking about the things he does out on the ice makes Ryan harder, somehow, because Taylor does everything absolutely and Ryan can’t wait to become something that Taylor cares to do well. 

“You’re worse than Jordan,” Ryan says fervently, in wonder, in accusation. “Only you, Taylor.” He lets his head fall back into the pillows and closes his eyes against the sight of him, brings his hips up off the mattress and holds his own cheeks apart, brazenly shows Taylor what’s waiting for him. “Come on, come on, stop stalling and --” 

“And what?” Taylor asks, crowding closer and lifting one of Ryan’s legs up over his hip. He rubs the head of his cock over Ryan’s hole, teases it in sleek, shallow circles. “What do you want?” 

Ryan wants to dig his fingers into his biceps until he bruises, wants to suck his teeth marks into his skin until Taylor wears the mark of having made Ryan wait. 

“I want you,” Ryan says, opening his eyes to glare at Taylor, going up on his elbows to give the look a greater weight, “I want your cock in my ass, I want to get to kiss you anytime I want, I want us to win together, you and me and Jordan. You make me want everything, you make me feel like I can have it all, so give it to me - _give me_ what I want.” 

“No, you’ve got it wrong,” Taylor says, but he rewards Ryan with the slow, steady push of his cock into the tight welcome Ryan’s muscles give it, “you’re that. You’re everything we need.” 

Once he’s as far as he can go, his balls nestled up against Ryan’s ass, he stills and falls forward over Ryan, his hands taking his weight. He lets his mouth speak for him, his tongue singing in Ryan’s mouth, pressing sentiment that words are too shallow to hold right inside him. 

Wordlessly, they agree that their bodies will finish the conversation they’ve started. Ryan’s knees stay tight in against Taylor’s sides, an ‘I need you, I needed this, don’t go,’ and Taylor’s hands hold Ryan’s hips down into the mattress to cushion the force of his thrusts; ‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.’ Ryan thanks Taylor with his mouth and eggs him on with the scratches his fingernails sting across his back. Taylor responds with his cock, worked into Ryan to find and learn the way Ryan’s breath hitches in his throat when Taylor plays across his prostate. 

Taylor’s fist is snug around Ryan’s cock, far shy of what it normally takes to make Ryan come, but Taylor smiles down at Ryan and fucks him with a steady paced confidence that Ryan knows is never wrong. He knows Taylor has him, has him found and figured out, so he clenches down around him as best he can and licks at his own mouth, lets his face take the shape of the pleasure Taylor is rocking into him and gratefully follows when Taylor jerks inside him, the hand Taylor has around his dick tightening for just a second, more than enough. 

“Fucking _christ_ ,” Taylor says after a beat or ten, his head pillowed on Ryan’s chest, “Did you seriously just hold out longer than I could? You’re the teenager here, what the hell.” 

Ryan smiles without looking at him, smug and sated in a way that makes his bones feel heavy, makes it seem like he could sink right through this bed. “Sorry about my stamina, but I definitely make up for it with my refractory period, I promise.” 

Taylor manages to lift his head for that, and he shifts experimentally, still inside Ryan and not completely soft yet. 

“Oh yeah?” he says with interest, and Ryan loves his life. 

“Oh definitely,” Ryan assures him, and rolls them both over to start a practical demonstration. 

 

____

 

So Ryan shows up for the practice the next morning with a hickey from Jordan still fading low on his throat, and tiny fingerprint bruises that Taylor pressed into his skin last night framing both hipbones. 

He doesn’t think about the marks he’s left on them, but it helps to think of them as ‘them’. It’s one thing to know that he has slept with both of his linemates when he’s been some kind of official part of the team for less than two weeks; it becomes something else entirely when he has to acknowledge that they’re best friends and ex-boyfriends. 

It’s something he should probably be ashamed of, or regret at least. But Ryan can’t think of them as two opposing points that he’s caught between, because the three of them play together as a line and it feels like they live that way too. With Ryan in the middle, flanked by them at all times. When two of them meet up in a two on one the third is still there, they both know he’s out there on the ice with them if they need him. You don’t ever begrudge your linemates or teammates a goal and Ryan knows it’s weird as hell to think of everything else they’ve done in the same way, but he can’t help that that’s how it feels. 

Wherever they are and whatever they do, it’s the three of them. Ryan doesn’t know how to think of it any other way. 

 

____

 

Jordan and Taylor don’t hang back to help Ryan clear away pucks and it doesn’t matter that they don’t. 

It’s the last day of training camp, which leaves them all with a couple weeks of mostly optional afternoons to get their lives in order before the season starts. Ryan is planning on showing up to every session he can, and he knows Jordan and Taylor will be here almost every day for regular practice, even if they skip the rest, so today is only the beginning, still.

Ryan takes his time showering and the locker room is mostly cleared out before he gets around to getting dressed. Taylor and Jordan are long gone. They said goodbye to him, so it’s not weird. Ryan doesn’t mind. 

He’s on his way out, last as usual, when Petry shows up, jogging around the corner. 

“Oh thank god you’re still here.” 

Ryan looks at him, eyebrows raised. He can’t imagine what he can do for Jeff that nobody else could do, but he’s listening. 

“Last time Taylor and I played golf I drove, so I have his clubs still and I was supposed to drop them over there now because he’s playing in some charity tournament tomorrow, but Julie’s flight got in early and she’s waiting for me at the airport. You can bring them over, right? You’re not busy?” 

Ryan doesn’t resent the assumption. 

“Nope, I can do that.” 

“Awesome. I owe you one, Nugget.” 

And that’s one nickname that Ryan really hopes doesn’t stick. 

 

____ 

 

Ryan doesn’t call or text to say that he’s headed over, because Taylor’s expecting Jeff with his clubs, so he’ll be home at least. 

When Ryan knocks on their door, it’s Jordan who yells that it’s open. 

Ryan leaves Taylor’s golf bag by the door, but wanders further into the apartment just to let them know he dropped them off. 

Taylor and Jordan are sitting on the sofa, eating and watching tv. Taylor is leaning into Jordan’s space to steal forkfuls of his pasta and Jordan is drinking from a bottle of water that he passes to Taylor instead of setting back down on the coffee table when he’s done. 

“Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to - I just --” 

They both turn to look at him, smiling like they don’t mind at all that he interrupted their evening of blissful domesticity or whatever. Like it’s not a big deal that he’s here, that he walked in on … whatever this is. 

“Hey! What are you doing here? Did we have plans?” Taylor says, still _smiling_ and it’s like the weirdness he should have been terrified of this morning got bumped back to arrive now, instead, bringing with it a fresh wave of awkwardness that Ryan thought the three of them had managed to escape. Because who does Taylor mean by ‘we’? Him and Ryan? All three of them? Is this his way of inviting Ryan to get used to hanging out with them when they’re together again? Are they together again? Ryan is so lost. 

“No, I. Jeff had to go pick up his girl at the airport, so he asked me to bring your clubs over. I left them by the door.” 

“Cool, thanks.” 

“Hey, do you wanna grab a plate? There’s plenty more food, this episode just started, you should --” Jordan starts, but Ryan doesn’t want to listen. 

“No thanks. I have … stuff I need to do. I just came to bring Taylor’s clubs. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” 

He thinks he hears one of them get up to follow him when he turns around and leaves, but he walks to the elevator with strides so quick it’s almost a jog, and he doesn’t look back. 

 

____

 

Ryan isn’t proud of it, but he goes home and shuts himself up in his apartment with all the blinds closed and the lights off. He gets into bed at 8pm and when his body refuses to sleep, he reaches for his ipod from his gym bag and listens to sad songs until he’s pretty sure he’ll never be happy again. He doesn’t cry, but that’s only because he doesn’t have to. He couldn’t feel any worse than he already does. 

This is what he wanted. 

When he came to Edmonton and met Jordan and Taylor, when he’d had one conversation with each of them, he knew they needed to be together and he’d made some kind of naive vow to himself to get that done. Because it was what was best for them. And it still is. 

This is what they want. 

Breaking up had been the worst case scenario and it had _happened_ and it shouldn’t have. Ryan had known all along that if he got them talking he could find a new angle to their problem; a new way to fix it. He’d wanted it to be him. He’d hoped it would work out that way, and it had. But not the way he’d thought it would. 

He has become what changed for them. 

When Jordan slept with Ryan, he’d inadvertently shown Taylor that Taylor didn’t know him so well that any which way he changed would be a bad thing, might be Taylor’s fault. Jordan would change every day they were together and that would never be anything but good. Taylor would be lucky to get to be there to see it. And Jordan must see now that Taylor will love him in every shape he takes, in everything he does, because Taylor doesn’t love some fixed, set idea of Jordan, though that was how it had seemed to them both. Taylor loves him in brand new ways every day, loves him when he hates him a little bit, even, but it’s that love that is their constant when who they are and how that feels changes constantly. Jordan loves Taylor the same way, and Ryan can see that. Ryan knows what that’s like, because they’ve taught him what it means and how it feels. 

They love each other and it had been seeing one another treat Ryan with some dawning, new kind of something that wasn’t love but could almost be mistaken for it that made them realize that they already had the real thing. Right there in their home, in their bed, in their hearts. 

Ryan hadn’t just helped them find their way back to one another, he’d been their ticket there. 

He never for one second thought that fixing the mess they couldn’t see their way out of would take him falling for each of them in turn. 

They’re happy and Ryan isn’t. 

But Ryan never had to gamble his feelings to lead them back to theirs. It was his mistake to tie what he wanted to what they would always want and no-one made Ryan promises that he honestly expected them to keep. 

He came here to play hockey and to be good for this team. 

So. Mission accomplished. 

Ryan’s happiness was never end game. Not for him, and not for them. 

 

____ 

 

An hour after Ryan finally manages to fall asleep, somewhere in the hours between late and very early that are lost in a wasteland of adrenaline for hockey players, he’s woken up by his phone ringing. 

_Jordan calling_. 

Ryan faceplants back into his pillows and thinks about all the reasons he has to not to want to speak to Jordan; all of the many complications of this situation that make it a terrible idea to answer his calls at four am. 

The phone hums twice more before Ryan rolls over and reaches for it, sighing at his ceiling but stroking his thumb across the screen gently, as if Jordan could feel it.

“Hey.” 

“Hey, did I wake you?” 

“No,” Ryan lies, because he knows as surely as he knows his own name that if he says he was sleeping, Jordan will hang up and refuse to answer Ryan’s calls until he’s satisfied that he’s had enough time to sleep. Taylor calls him the ‘sleep police’, but Jordan insists he’s merely an ‘enthusiast’, like that’s somehow any different or any better. 

“Oh, good. I wanted to call because … I wanted to check in with you, I guess. You ran out of here pretty fast earlier, and I -- are you okay? Did we do something?” 

It doesn’t help that Jordan goes right to the ‘we’ place. Ryan doesn’t want to think about whether or not Taylor is asleep next to Jordan, if he’s trying to be quiet so he doesn’t wake him up. 

“Are you in bed?”

“No, I’m in the living room. Why?” 

“Did you get out of bed to call me so you wouldn’t wake Taylor?” 

Not wanting to think about it doesn’t mean Ryan won’t think about it, or that he feels like he deserves to escape thinking about it, knowing the truth. 

“Yeah. He’s - is that what this is about? Me and Taylor?” 

“Isn’t that what everything has always been about?” 

Jordan takes a sharp breath and Ryan feels bad; is mad at himself for feeling bad. Maybe he didn’t intend for the question to sound so barbed, but maybe he should have. 

“No. No, Ryan, it’s not,” Jordan says sadly, and Ryan hates that he made Jordan’s voice sound like that. Taylor and Jordan have never asked Ryan for anything he didn’t want to give them and they’ve worked hard to make him feel like part of the team; to make this crazy and confusing transition go the way Ryan wanted it to go, if not the way it should have gone, or smoothly. 

“I know it isn’t, I’m sorry I said that. I know … I know the breakup was tough on you guys, and I know it was never my place to get between you, but I thought I was helping. I wanted to help. And it doesn’t really matter now, right?” Ryan tries to make it sound more happy than hopeful. 

“Why doesn’t it matter? Doesn’t -- don’t you want it to matter?” 

“Well you’re together again, so … everyone’s happy. You got your happy ending, eh? I’m happy for you guys. Everyone on the team is going to be so happy -” 

“Ryan. Ryan, stop. Taylor and I aren’t back together. And if we were, would you really be so happy about it?” 

“Yes,” Ryan insists, “I would. I would be. Because I want you both to be happy. That’s what will make me … that’s what I want.” 

Jordan doesn’t say anything for a long time and Ryan doesn’t either. He lies in bed with the covers tangled at his feet and he doesn’t move, barely breathes. He looks up at his ceiling and things about the afternoon he’d spent under Jordan’s, under the one Taylor is sleeping under right now. He thinks about waking up next to Taylor and waking up next to Jordan. He thinks about how he could never, ever choose between them, so he’s almost glad he’ll never get the chance to. 

He hasn’t got a clue what Jordan’s thinking while neither of them say a thing and the only sound is silence, the somehow loud, pressing lack of anything close to sound. It’s four o’clock in the morning and Ryan has no idea why they’re still on the phone, why Jordan isn’t saying anything, why he called in the first place. 

“Jordan, why did you call?” 

When Jordan speaks, his voice sounds small. 

“I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the look on your face when you walked in. I needed to talk to you. I don’t … I don’t ever want to feel like I’ve let you down. I don’t want you to ever let me let you down.” 

“But you know it wouldn’t count as letting me down if you and Taylor were to get back together, right? You have to know that. You and him have so much history and there’s so much still left to fight for. What kind of friend would I be if I did anything to mess that up?” 

“You’re a good friend, Ryan. Ever since you came to Edmonton things have been so good. Better even than they were when Taylor and I were together, in some ways.” 

“Whatever happens, I’m gonna be here. I’m not going anywhere.” 

“So why does it feel like you’ve been saying ‘goodbye’ all day?” 

Ryan can’t answer that question, so he doesn’t try. He can’t explain why the prospect of Taylor and Jordan getting back together feels like the end of something when it shouldn’t; when it isn’t really. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says again, instead, because he can. He can make sure he’s here for them, however they need him. Even if they only want him, and in ways that might never be enough for him. It’s the opposite of self-sacrifice. It’s the fiercest kind of greed, pure and not simple at all. 

“But we should sleep. Taylor will have a field day if we’re too slow to keep up with him at practice tomorrow.” 

“Yeah. I guess. Goodnight, Ryan. Sleep well.” 

“You too. ‘Night.” 

It doesn’t take Ryan long to get to back to sleep, but he wakes up the next morning with his phone still clasped in his hand and his head full of beginnings that seem fated to never become anything more. 

 

____

 

Given how he’s still wading through the aftermath of his first official team night out, Ryan isn’t exactly excited to repeat the experience. 

But camp is over, they all survived more or less, and if they’re going to blow off steam then this is the last real opportunity to do it. 

Ryan all but drags himself home from practice and when he throws himself down on the couch he honestly wonders if he’ll leave this spot again before practice tomorrow afternoon. But after an hour of miserably watching miserable early evening television he hits some kind of moping limit and decides he needs to re-evaluate. Immediately. Or three days ago. 

This situation with Jordan and Taylor sucks, but that’s technically only a small part of Ryan’s life in Edmonton and it’s a situation that only sucks for him. So being a baby about it isn’t going to change anything and it’s hardly doing him any favours. 

‘Fake it till you make it’, Ryan thinks as he sits on his bed drying off after his shower and eyeing his closet, wondering what out of everything that lurks in there best says ‘I’m over you and your ex-boyfriend, let’s be friends and win the Stanley Cup in celebration.’ After some very serious and fairly skeptical speculation, he decides on his slate grey jeans and a black v-neck tshirt that’s a little too tight in a way that’s hopefully good. He’s a young, soon to be successful hockey player who lives in a city that lives for hockey and he’s already managed to bag his linemates, who are each the hottest guy he’s ever seen. And that was when he wasn’t trying. Maybe he can find someone nice and uncomplicated to go home with tonight. That would probably solve more or less none of his problems, but it might make things easier in the long term. It might make it clearer to Jordan and Taylor and the rest of the team that he’s smart enough to know when his luck has run out, and perceptive enough to know when to call it quits. 

Sure enough, his entrance garners a chorus of wolf whistles again tonight, and this time Ryan is pretty sure only most of it comes from his teammates. Although to be fair, it was a beautiful day in Edmonton and most of the people in the bar have probably been drinking all day. 

“So much swagger for one so young and such a weenie,” Whits says, and Ryan promptly flips him off because the loudest guys on any given team are always the easiest to deal with. 

“You’d be surprised,” Taylor says, and Ryan is kind of thrilled to see that he and Jordan are here already and sitting at the same table but not right next to one another. Easing himself into seeing them together again is key, Ryan thinks. He’s going to get right on that as soon as he stops blushing and making frantic ‘cut it out’ motions at Taylor. Unfortunately, he’s too late. 

“No, absolutely no way,” Jonesy says, leaning out from the table Ryan is standing next to and pulling him down into the seat beside him. “You’re keeping it in your pants for the foreseeable future, Hallsy. Bring me medals or the Cup and you can date your pick of the rookies, but until then I’m cutting you off.” 

“But I’ve already got four medals,” Taylor protests, pouting more at the slight than at being denied permission to date Ryan, Ryan is sure.

“And how many of those are gold, Hallsy?” 

“Three,” Ryan and Taylor answer at the same time, and Ryan could kick himself. So much for distance. Jonesy shoots him a funny look, but Taylor is grinning at him, and Gags laughs out loud like he’s never heard anything funnier in his life. Whits is eyeing them speculatively and Ryan should probably excuse himself to go to the bar or something, but - 

“Tough break, man,” Jonesy says, “Nuge is worth at least four. Just three more years until the next Olympics, though, bud. Hang in there and don’t stop believin’.”

“With my two, we’ve got five gold between us,” Jordan chips in, and Ryan half wants to crawl under the table and play dead, half wants to crawl under the table and suck Jordan off. 

Instead, he puts a stop to this conversation before he’s kicked off the team for lewd behavior. 

“I think I can negotiate my own dates, guys. But thanks for looking out for me, it’s nice to know I’m valued. Can I get anyone a drink?” 

It’s a very effective method of bringing the conversation to a grinding halt before the clamour begins, and it takes Ryan three trips to the bar to get everyone what they want, even with Horcs helping him out. 

“They’re just kidding, you know that, right?” he asks before he lets Ryan escape back over to his seat next to Jonesy, one entire table away from Jordan and Taylor because Ryan has always been ambitious. 

“Sure,” Ryan agrees easily, vowing never to be the one to have to break it to their captain that they kind of weren’t kidding at all. 

 

____

 

Ultimately, it’s a good night. Ryan stays close enough to Taylor and Jordan that his avoidance isn’t even obvious to them and he maintains enough distance to give him some idea of what life will be like from here - lived constantly around them, but not with them. 

He has a couple drinks, he bonds with the rest of the team, he even flirts with someone who offers to buy him a beer, but makes the overture looking at Ryan’s ass rather than into his face. The guy is a bro, not really the hockey player type, more the football or baseball kind of fan in a way that makes him loud around the mouth, heavy in the elbows. He isn’t unattractive, though, and he’s clearly interested in Ryan, so Ryan has no problem with any of what’s happening until Jordan shows up to rescue him from a situation that Ryan got himself into and wouldn’t mind seeing through. If it had been Taylor, Ryan might have shrugged him off, but it’s Jordan who appears out of nowhere to wrap an obvious, comfortable arm around Ryan’s shoulders, to lean in against him at the bar, hip to hip, in a way that makes explicitly clear a whole bunch of truths that Ryan is proud of, but hasn’t figured out how to bear that way with his body yet. 

The bro who wanted to take Ryan home beats a hasty retreat, Jordan disappears back to Taylor’s side and Ryan’s disappointment accompanies him home. 

When he gets home, he might strip himself morosely out of his clothes and sacrifice the moments between getting there and getting to sleep to remembering and celebrating in tiny, inexorable detail every single time Jordan and Taylor have touched him, but if he does he’ll pretend he forgets tomorrow and no-one else will be any the wiser. 

It’s a good night. Ryan goes home alone to a dark, empty apartment and Taylor and Jordan go back to their shared home and their shared bed, together. Everything goes to plan. This is what Ryan hoped for. This is for the best. 

 

____ 

 

They have six days between the end of training camp and the start of their preseason games to get their lives all set up to revolve around hockey. 

Smytty sends Ryan increasingly panicked texts about the seemingly endless list of supplies his kids need for the coming school year and Whits and Dubes pester him with pictures from their last rounds of golf for a while, the weather and their schedule teaming up to make getting out there increasingly impossible. Taylor is with them most of the time and when Jordan sends Ryan a picture from a mini golf course, it seems to be just the two of them. 

This is Ryan’s first time living by himself, away from home and without a billet family, and there are far more nuances to it than he could have imagined. The team takes care of some things, but it’s up to him to decorate his apartment and figure out what he needs to have sent out from home and it takes him an entire day to put together a meal plan that satisfies his diet and his stomach. Things get a little touch and go with his dryer and he almost gives in and calls Jordan for help, but he figures he and Taylor are busy spending what little downtime they have left together, finding new and old ways to share their lives, so he muddles through. 

Working out is a familiar constant that Ryan comes to rely on. 

The Oilers’ team have given him a training programme that’s designed to help him bulk up, so he’s doing workouts that only help the more he does them. He goes into the team’s workout rooms early every morning when it’s almost always empty and he turns his phone off during the evenings he spends holed up in the gym in his building, evenings that turn into nights and sometimes early mornings. He pushes himself, but not so hard that it’ll hurt him, and sometimes he spends entire hours walking on the treadmill or cycling an easy pace that he hopes will bring him closer to sleep. It doesn’t.

Ryan isn’t hiding from Taylor and Jordan. He doesn’t ignore their calls or refuse to answer their texts. He sees them at practice most days and he works a little bit of distance into how they are between drills and scrimmages and promo shoots and weigh-ins. They’re the same as they’ve been since the beginning when they play together and Ryan can handle the tension headache it gives him to so forcibly pull himself from the very center of that out into companionable, respectful space that he works to maintain beyond that. 

Maybe he’s mindful of and purposefully works against the kind of schedule he knows they keep, but all he’s really doing is getting ready for what’s to come. 

Ryan’s first NHL season looms and they’ve all got things to prove with this one. 

Any new and admittedly difficult distance between Ryan and his linemates is nothing but the considerate berth of space that any new or not so new relationship would warrant. 

Ryan spends the days leading up to his first games as an Edmonton Oiler gearing up for and getting used to what life on this team and in this city will be like for him. 

 

____

 

Their preseason isn’t a victory parade, but they beat the Chicago Blackhawks on Ryan’s first night out on the ice in blue and orange and that feels like a more than meaningful start. In eight games they come away with five wins, and Ryan gets a taste for travelling with the team, for playing with the team in front of fans, for being _part of_ the team. 

There’s still seven full days before the Penguins arrive in Edmonton to give them their first real test - one that counts - but their days are no longer their own and they have morning skate and practices to make on time or show up early for, leave last from in Ryan’s case. 

Rexall is close to completely ready for the season to start, and Ryan will forever be thankful for the fact that he was so busy getting his heart broken that he forgot to be nervous for things like seeing his stall all set up for the very first time, nameplate and all. He looks at his jersey hanging in there with _his_ number on it and sees home. He reaches to touch the top of his helmet for luck, because that’s what he has, here. He didn’t find it or receive it, they’ve made it together. They make it for themselves and pass it through every puck they touch. 

 

____

 

After one particularly raucous and excitedly energized practice, they stream out into the parking lot more or less en masse and Ryan knows before anyone says anything, knows simply by the tide of players, that they’re up to something. 

A circle forms around Taylor and Jordan’s trucks, parked side by side as usual, and Ryan pushes through it to find them standing in the center of it, laughing. 

Both of their back windows now proudly bear brand new ‘baby on board’ signs, but a sharpie artist has altered them to say ‘baby hockey player on board.’ There are customized Oilers stickers bearing Ryan’s number on either side, in each case. 

“You’re a couple years late, guys,” Jordan says to the crowd, but he’s smiling at Ryan. 

“It’s not about being a rookie, it’s about _having_ a rookie. Congratulations, you guys, it’s a future NHL superstar!” Whits yells, trying to jump up onto Ryan’s back but finding himself felled by Ryan’s sharp and pointy elbows as better men than him have been. 

“It’s not - I’m not theirs,” Ryan tries to protest to the quickly dispersing, still-laughing crowd, but no-one listens, and even worse - Taylor answers him. 

“Sure you are,” he says, wrapping his arm around Ryan’s shoulders, and they stand side by side and watch in silence that Ryan is confident Taylor finds more companionable than he can, while Jordan reaches in to take the ‘baby on board’ sign down but wretchedly makes no attempt whatsoever to unstick Ryan’s numbers. 

 

____

 

The next day Taylor shows up to practice having added his and Jordan’s numbers to bracket the entire awful arrangement on his window, and Ryan can’t look at either of them for almost an hour. 

 

____

 

It’s easy to keep his distance when there are so many other things to focus on and Ryan tries harder and harder every day to convince himself that it will always be this easy. 

He doesn’t think about how he’d spent all three of their nights on the road as a team so far staring up at unfamiliar ceilings and counting the distance between his room and theirs in feet, in what it would cost him to make the journey. 

He doesn’t think about how being in different cities with them is almost as bad as being at home with them, because he still can’t figure out what’s worse - seeing them head home together, or seeing them first thing in the morning, five minutes after they’ve woken up so they’re still young and sloppy with sleep, stripped of the mask of their morning routines and right in front of Ryan, right next to him like that’s where they think they belong. 

He doesn’t think about getting one of them alone. He doesn’t wonder about that window, and whether he still has an afternoon or an evening or a whole day, an entire night to be with them before that chance is gone again and gone for good this time, because they’re supposed to be together and that’s exactly what they’re obviously figuring out. 

Ryan helped them all get here and he knows he should look at the way they smile at one another now with pride, he knows he should feel accomplished when he sees them bunched up in a line for a drill, or jostling for space when they’re piled into airplane aisles and bus seats together. He knows it should be easy for him to go when they pull him in after them, he knows he should greet them and everything they’re becoming again with satisfaction for how everything has worked out just as he’d planned, by being happy for them. 

But what knows even better than all of that, is what Taylor had meant when he’d said that his relationship with Jordan had been the best thing he’d ever done. 

Seeing them together again shows Ryan the best thing he’s ever seen, the best thing he’s ever been some small part of. 

They’re the worst thing he’s ever done to himself. 

 

____

 

Ryan will get over it eventually, because he has no other choice - there’s no other way that this goes. 

 

____

 

Taylor and Jordan make everything harder, even though Ryan knows they’re trying to do the exact opposite of that. 

They keep including him like nothing has changed, like they still need him, and Ryan can’t figure out a way to say ‘stop pretending you like me as much as I like you because you don’t and it’s hurting my feelings’ that wouldn’t make him sound all of eleven years old. 

So Ryan grits his teeth and grins and bears it with a healthy dose of regular reminders that he deserves to feel so useless and superfluous and jealous and sad because he’s all of those things and that’s entirely his own fault. Hanging out with them, even just in the player’s lounge or when they invite him to breakfast before morning skate, hurts in a way that Ryan comes to enjoy, because as pitiful as it is he realizes about three days after he gives up on ever meaning anything more to either of them that he’s so gone for them he doesn’t care. Maybe he’ll always feel this way. Maybe it will kill him every single day for years to see them together and happy. He’ll take that over not seeing them at all, or having to see them stay miserable. 

Ryan will patent his own personal brand of ‘getting over it’ that will entail never getting over it, but learning to stop hoping that things had been different. 

 

____

 

“Video games, our place,” Taylor says after practice and Ryan agrees instantly because it’s not like he has any better offers and even if he did he’d still pick Taylor and Jordan over everything else, every single time. 

But after they’ve played like one round of NHL’12 Jordan wanders off to order food and Taylor gets up to grab a stick and show Ryan some kind of wacky trick shot he’s been working on, and when they’ve scraped their plates clean none of them make a move to pick the game back up. 

“Season opener in a few days,” Jordan says as they lie in various states of supine laziness across the couch. Taylor has his head on Ryan’s shoulder and his hand on Jordan’s thigh. Ryan doesn’t question this, or think about it at all. 

“Are you nervous?” Taylor asks him, and Ryan figures the weight of the moment gives him an excuse to rub his cheek against the top of Taylor’s head. 

“I guess. But like … no? It’s the good kind of nerves, maybe.” 

“The ones that make you feel like you’re about to do something huge, right?” Jordan smiles at him and he can feel Taylor do the same when he lets his head fall from Ryan’s shoulder, presses his grinning face to the bare skin between Ryan’s throat and the collar of his shirt. “I think we know what you mean. This is gonna be a big one.” 

“But it’s nothing new for you, right? You must feel like this at the start of every season.” 

“Nah,” Taylor says, “We mostly played with Horcs last year and he’s the best, but this is different. We were still figuring so much stuff out and it was cool to have him right there to watch out for us, but he plays a different style, you know? He’s steady and cautious in the ways Jordan might be, if we weren’t around to break him out of that habit, eh Ebs?” 

“Oh sure, thanks for skating like a lunatic so I’ve got no choice but to keep up or watch you take yourself out of the game. At least we’ve got Ryan now. It’s sweet how you’ll calm the fuck down for him _and_ me.”

Taylor reaches out to flick Jordan on the forehead, but doesn’t try to take his hand back when Jordan catches it and holds on. “It’s not calming down, you non, it’s … trust, or some soppy crap like that. I know I don’t have to do everything all by myself when I’m out there with you two, I don’t even have to push as hard as when it’s us and someone else. You two do things I can’t do, and sometimes that’s what we need. Sometimes my best isn’t going to get us the goal, but your best or Ryan’s best will. That’s team thinking, man. There’s nothing weird about that.” 

Jordan grins at Ryan. “Awww he’s all grown up. You came and brought us the gift of team spirit, Ryan. It’s a miracle!” 

“Hey,” Taylor protests, “I always had team spirit. I’ve got team spirit for days, thank you. It’s just that Ryan - our line - we’re like proof of that. Proof that it pays off, maybe. We can do the things you always want to be able to do for your team, but it’s not a miracle. It’s not a one-off. It’s just us.” 

He says it like he truly believes it, like he knows it’s true. And Ryan gets that, because Ryan feels the same way, but hearing them talk about how much they need him and how much they probably needed him well before he got here makes Ryan want to ask painful and uncomfortable questions like why can’t they need him in other ways, why do they fit so well in some ways but not all of them. 

“Yeah, I really don’t think it’s me that makes the difference, but we play together pretty well. I’m lucky I got drafted to a team with a spot for me.” 

Taylor sits up and throws his arms up over the back of the couch, one around both of them, and he laughs when Jordan snorts. 

“We still have to work on that modesty thing for sure. If the three of us played on the fourth line, or in the AHL, or in the KHL, or in a beer league in Minnesota we’d still play the way we do together. We’re _right_ together, man. Ebby and I were good before you got here and you were great before us, but it’s next level with the three of us out there. Everyone can see it and we definitely feel it.” 

“Can’t you feel it?” Jordan asks, peering at Ryan around Taylor, looking at him like it’s entirely reasonable to ask Ryan how he feels about them, like he’s totally prepared for anything Ryan could say on that topic. 

“I guess,” is all he can say, lest he say anything more, but he’s the one to break the silence that follows while they all sit and mull their collective talent over. 

They’re going to be amazing together and Ryan has at least one definite way to claim that word to include him, one very important place where he can be a part of what they do. So that’s one more than he came here hoping for, even if it’s one short of everything he wants. 

“We’re gonna be great, huh?” he can say with confidence, with excited pride. 

“Hell yes we are,” Taylor grins, his hand in Jordan’s hair doing not all that much to quell Ryan’s mood, considering. 

 

____

 

It’s understandable, really, that Ryan is in such a good mood when he leaves to head home. 

It’s understandable, too, that he was a little distracted as he left and gets almost as far as the elevator before he realizes his phone is still on the counter in their kitchen. 

It’s probably understandable that when Ryan walks back into their apartment without knocking, it’s to find Taylor and Jordan making out against the very counter Ryan left his phone on. 

This is their apartment, after all, and they’re free to do whatever they like in it. 

There really isn’t anything Ryan can say about how Taylor has Jordan backed up into the counter with his hands on his hips, up underneath his shirt. Ryan’s input has no bearing on how Jordan’s hands are in Taylor’s hair and his legs are spread apart, wanton. Nothing Ryan could say would change how completely unshocking it is to see them tangled up that in a way that is clearly familiar, as easy and instinctual for them to touch one another like that as it is for Ryan to physically step back when he sees it, pulled to pieces by the unity of it - the lack of place or purpose or need for him.

Jordan pushes Taylor away the second he catches sight of Ryan standing there. He scrubs the back of his hand across his mouth and looks at Ryan with wide, horrified eyes. Taylor reaches for him, starts to cross the kitchen to get to him, but even though he’s dizzy all of a sudden and his vision is strangely blurred, Ryan manages to turn and walk away. 

“Ryan, wait. Ryan! This isn’t what it looks like, this is about _you_!” Taylor shouts down the corridor after him and Ryan will never know how he does it, but he makes himself turn around. 

He waits for Taylor to catch up to him. He evades Taylor’s attempts to pull him into his arms, to touch him in any way, by taking small steps backwards until he can push the button for the elevator. 

“I’m really happy for you guys. It’s awesome that you’re back together. I’m really -- I’m glad I could help. I’m happy for you. I just. I have to go. I need to go … away from here.” 

Ryan has to push Taylor away when he tries to follow him into the elevator, but he hopes he does it with a smile on his face, because he’s trying really, really hard to smile and the effort is the only thing that’s keeping his face from crumbling. 

When he gets downstairs to his car, he sits with his hands on the steering wheel and his forehead pressed to it, too. He breathes and he breathes and he breathes and he has almost managed to talk himself out of crying when the passenger door opens and Jordan climbs in. 

“Ryan,” he starts, but when Ryan turns to look at him he reaches out without thinking and his hands take the hold they’d had on the steering wheel and tighten it into Jordan’s shirt, his mouth latches onto Jordan’s like that was what he needed all this time, not air, not anything else. 

Jordan kisses him back, all heat and instinct and fast, breathless familiarity, but then he slows into something gentle, something far more like an apology, and Ryan wrenches his mouth away, scrambles back against the door like he’s scared. Because he is. 

“Fuck, I’m so sorry. I didn’t -- I didn’t mean to do that, I don’t know why I did that, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I --” 

“Ryan,” Jordan sighs, “You don’t have a single thing to be sorry for. I’m sorry. Taylor is sorry. Come back up and we can talk about this, the three of us. There’s so much we have to talk about and none of it is about Taylor and I getting back together, because we aren’t and we’re never going to, okay?” 

“Why not?” Ryan all but demands, because he can’t think of a single good reason for them not to be together. They’re great together. They love each other. They’ve figured out all the things that broke them up and they’re so much better now. There’s nothing standing in their way anymore. 

“Just come with me,” Jordan insists, pulling at Ryan’s hand and refusing to let go, “You trust me, right? So trust me now. You have to come with me.” 

It’s playing dirty, but Ryan knows that Jordan knows that and he does trust him. He trusts him not to barter with that trust unless it’s important. 

“Okay,” he says, and he goes. 

 

____

 

Taylor is waiting for them when they walk back in and Ryan understands the impulse all too well when his reaction to seeing Ryan is to grab his face in his hands and kiss him so enthusiastically that Ryan sees stars, but he has no idea why Taylor has that impulse. 

He’s still dazed when Taylor lets him go so he blames his complete lack of eloquence or tact on the loss of the oxygen Taylor just robbed his brain of. 

“Okay, so do we all just make out with each other, now? Is that what this is? Because okay, but no. You’ve got to realize that what you two have is way bigger and better than just … me.” 

“No, no way, you’re cutting that out and you’re cutting it out now, Ryan,” Taylor says with his hands still on either side of Ryan’s face, ducked in close to look Ryan in the eye. “The self-deprecating thing is cute on a hockey player, but you’re not getting interviewed when you’re with us. You’re a huge fucking deal to us.” 

“You’re both a huge fucking deal to me, too,” Ryan says, smiling, because he’s never made any secret of that. 

“Cool. So how do you feel about dating us?” Jordan asks, and Ryan laughs. 

“Oh, sure. We’ll all date each other. It’ll be great, cool idea Ebby,” Ryan says, deadpan, but neither Jordan nor Taylor join in in his laughter. “Um. Uh?” Ryan is lost. 

“We’re serious. Date us,” Taylor says, apparently deadly serious and still, _still_ touching Ryan, like that doesn’t make everything more complicated, always. 

“So, like.” Ryan can’t believe he’s actually trying to make sense of this. This is insane. “You’re together and you’re living together and you both date me, too? Like … on some kind of a rota system? I get Jordan on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you on Wednesdays and Sundays, and the rest of the time you’re a totally normal couple? That’s insane.”

“Yeah, that would be insane,” Jordan agrees, “Which is why that’s not at all what we’re saying.” 

“We’d all be together. All the time. We can’t really do anything about living together because for some dumb reason when we were looking at apartments we forgot to prepare for the eventuality that we’d both fall for our new rookie linemate in a big, big way, but you could just … be here, always. Or we could come hang out at your place. You’re probably going to need a bigger bed, but Jordan’s is definitely big enough for the three of us, I checked.” Taylor Hall, ever the practical one. 

“And that’s … that’s just … it’s that simple? That easy? The three of us are into one another so the three of us are dating and that’s just the way it is? That’s how this goes because that’s what we all want?” 

Taylor and Jordan nod in unison, very seriously, and it isn’t cute. 

Ryan looks between them. 

“Well okay then. If you’re sure.” 

“What! Seriously? For real? You’ll date us?” Taylor asks, mouth caught between falling open in shock and spreading wide in a grin. 

“ _Obviously_ ,” Ryan says, elated. “But only if you’re completely positive that what you two have together isn’t what you really want. Because if it is I’ll find a way to be okay with that, I promise. I want what’s best for you.” 

“You’re what’s best for us,” Jordan says. He crowds in close against Ryan’s side, kissing him on the corner of the mouth and folding both him and Taylor into a hug. 

“Seriously,” Taylor agrees, muffled. Ryan thinks he has his face pressed into the side of Jordan’s neck. “We can’t be together without you. We didn’t work before you, and we won’t ever work without you.”

“But why? I know that’s how it is with hockey, but you made it work before, the two of you. You were happy, right? I don’t get what I can bring to that.” Call him a glutton for punishment, but Ryan won’t be satisfied until he knows for sure that they know what they’re doing; that they’re not gonna take back what they’re offering him. 

“We’ve been so happy with you,” Jordan starts to explain, but when he lifts his head to look at Ryan he gets distracted by his apparent immediate need to make out with him, so Ryan is left multitasking between that and listening to Taylor, who picks up where Jordan left off. This is working out really well for them already. 

“You make us _us_. You make us versions of ourselves that are better. Better for one another, sure, but only because of you. Because loving you makes it easy to love each other. You changed us, Ryan. You didn’t just show us where we went wrong before, you showed us how to fix it. We could probably have done it without you, but we don’t want to. Everything’s better when we’re together.” 

When Ryan opens his eyes Taylor is looking at him with the same expression he’d had on his face the night he’d talked about how happy he’d been with Jordan, once upon a time. He’s looking at Ryan like he’s a complication and a half, and more than impossible most of the time. He’s looking at Ryan like his life makes too much sense without him. 

“If you’re sure,” Ryan says against Jordan’s mouth, says with Taylor’s hand not at all stealthily making its way down the back of his jeans. 

“We’re never anything but sure, with you,” Jordan says, and Ryan believes him, because he knows exactly what that’s like. 

 

____

 

Ryan would love to be able to say that they don’t sleep together five minutes after they decide they’re dating. 

And he can, in fact, say just that. 

They make it well over an hour before Taylor lures Jordan and Ryan into the bedroom with nothing but the sheer force of his shamelessness. 

 

____

 

“This is dumb,” Taylor says, sitting between Jordan and Ryan on the couch and to his credit being almost subtle about how he’s trying to feel them up. 

“We’ve all already slept together,” is his argument as he gets his hand up under Jordan’s shirt. 

“Remember? Ryan, you fucked Jordan. You’ve still got his teeth marks on your throat. Right next to mine, by total coincidence. That happened when we had sex. Do you remember that? You should, you were there. I rocked your world.” 

Ryan tries to snort, he really does, but Taylor is talking out loud about all the sex the three of them had and he has the palm of his hand in Ryan’s lap, groping him through his jeans. It’s possible that Ryan moans instead. 

“I think Ryan is going to make shower sex a lot easier, and a hell of a lot more fun. Jordan tends to get a little weak in the knees when we do it standing up,” Taylor tells Ryan conspiratorially, “But Ryan can hold you up now. He can stand there behind you, wet and naked and pressed right up against you. Oh hey, maybe he can finger you while I blow you. That’s definitely one to earmark.” 

Ryan leans around Taylor to see how Jordan is handling this and maybe as he does he puts his hand over Taylor’s in his lap and lifts his hips up into it, but if he does it’s only a little and he has a feeling no-one here is going to call him on it. Jordan definitely won’t, because he has his head tipped back against the back of the couch and his eyes are closed. Taylor’s hand is playing with his nipple under his shirt and Jordan has his own hand inside his shorts. 

“For the record,” Ryan says, “I could totally hold out longer than this. I just don’t want to.” 

“Sure,” Jordan agrees, ripping Taylor’s flies open as the two of them stand up. 

“Absolutely. Noted. Super noted,” Taylor assures Ryan, reaching to tug his shirt off. 

 

____

 

Ryan finds he’s almost upset by how easy it is to coordinate their first attempt at threeway sex. 

“It shouldn’t have been this simple, it just shouldn’t have,” he protests as he watches Jordan reach back to help Taylor guide himself inside him. 

“You wanted to watch, Ryan,” Taylor reminds him, bottom lip between his teeth as he presses into Jordan and makes himself wait for Jordan’s confirmation to move. 

“I know, and I did and I do and you’re so fucking hot together I might come just from the sight of you two, but still. This should have been more complicated. This should definitely have been harder.” 

“C’mere, I’ll show you harder,” Jordan says, reaching for him. 

Ryan wants to laugh, he really does, because they’re _ridiculous_ , but Jordan is naked and currently getting fucked by Taylor, their boyfriend, and he’s reaching for Ryan having definitely implied some kind of promise to touch Ryan’s dick, so Ryan shuffles forward on his knees as fast as he possibly can, instead. 

Jordan and Taylor are beautiful together, the contrast between their bodies and the way they move, the way they touch one another and the way they touch Ryan different in turn to how he touches them, how they look next to him. They move like they know each other well, and they do, but Ryan isn’t at all put off by the prospect of having to catch up. He plays that position really, really well. 

“I want to blow you again, can I?” he asks Jordan, and Taylor laughs, because he’s mean. 

So Taylor fucks Jordan while Ryan sucks Jordan’s cock, and when Ryan is still swallowing Jordan’s come off his own tongue Taylor reaches for the lube again and eyes Ryan’s ass with considerable intent. 

“Oh, am I getting fucked too?” Ryan asks, excited, shifting eagerly back into the thick press of Taylor’s slick fingers. 

“I feel like the occasion calls for it,” Jordan says, bending to smear wet, tongue-heavy kisses to Ryan’s cock. 

“Awesome. Who's doing me?” He doesn’t really care or need to know, but it’s a novelty to get to ask, still. 

Taylor hooks his chin up over Ryan’s shoulder and bites gently at the marks fading low on his throat. He glances down at Jordan and even from this angle, Ryan can see the gleam in his eye. 

“Whoever gets hard again first.” 

 

____

 

Ryan gets his first goal in his very first NHL game, against the Penguins. It doesn’t come until the last period, but when it does it’s from an assist by Taylor and it ties up the game. Jordan’s shootout goal is a beauty and added to a goal by Hemmer, it’s why they win it. 

The mood in the locker room afterward is much, much quieter than you’d expect, but every single guy in there is grinning. 

“So,” Horcs says, “Let’s make that the beginning of something special, eh?” and the room erupts in cheers. 

Ryan gets hit on the helmet so many times he suspects he’s going to have a headache when he gets home, but he’s not so sure once Taylor and Jordan have wrapped him up in a hug that makes him feel bright all over, a very different kind of home that makes everything else seem quiet and muted and irrelevant in the face of how loudly, perfectly _right_ they are together. 

 

____

 

Jordan and Taylor make it team official by walking into practice one day and handing their combined five gold medals to Jonesy, because they’re jerks. 

 

____  
____  
____

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fictional story about characters who share the names and circumstances of real people, so some of the details listed herein are true to canon, some are not. You're very welcome to ask if you need clarification on which are which.


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